When I think back to the dinners of my childhood, I’m sorry to say (Mom, especially if you’re reading this), that mostly the bad ones stand out. As a kid I was just as food obsessed as I am now, but with little control over what I had access to, and virtually none when it came to dinnertime. It was a bad day when I came home to fish for dinner. Served, in my memory at least, with warmed stewed tomatoes with little green bits in small glass cups that were probably very stylish in the 70s. Beef stew ran a close second – I still have it in my head that I’m not a fan, and am always surprised when I enjoy it – typically made with lean flank steak that had the texture of rope and got wedged in my teeth. I called it beef gum, because it gave such a good, long chew. Beef chaw, if you will.
But there is one exception: hash. Strangely enough I have no recollection of my mom making roast beef dinners, but she must have in order to use up the leftover meat and potatoes to make hash. It was finely chopped – in a meat grinder, even? – with some onion, I think, and then flattened like a pancake in our electric frying pan until it got good and crispy around the edges. I don’t think it was structurally sound enough to be cut into wedges, so it was served up as a sort of meat scramble, with lots of crispy bits interspersed throughout, and doused with ketchup. I loved it.
So I (may have mentioned the dogsitting?) found a note on A’s kitchen counter, left before heading to Mexico, that there was leftover steak and potatoes in the fridge. {Flashback to teenagehood and babysitting – finding a note to help yourself to the chips and pop – jackpot!} A couple chunks of steak and a container of roasted potatoes, with remnants of onion clinging to them. Hmm. My first instinct was to rush home and try my hand at hash.
I have eaten relatively well this week. But I think that this dish of hash beat them all – lobster gnocchi included. It brought me right back to the dinner table of my youth – long and wooden with benches, not chairs – like that scene in Ratatouille where Anton Ego gets sucked through the wormhole into his French country kitchen with a scraped knee.
The thing about hash is you can’t start with raw ingredients – it must be fashioned out of leftovers. Chop the meat and potatoes up fine – a food processor works well, just don’t turn it into paste – and cook it in a hot skillet with a bit of oil. When the bottom is looking dark attempt to flip it – it will crumble apart and then you can just move it around in the pan until it’s heated through, and serve hot, with ketchup. (Eat the ketchupy bits off the top, add more, repeat.)
I think I will go ahead and commit to going back to the daily posts for the month of April. I miss that pressure of having to report every day. (And I’m getting off the hook too easily on those oatmeal-yogurt-reheated Tim’s nights.)
One Year Ago: Banana Bread with Peanut Butter (and just look how adorable W was!)
April 01 2009 | beef | 19 Comments »
OK, here we go. Fiona (who is vowing this year to read 100 books and tell us about them – so maybe that can be our other stay-home-in-your-jammies book club? We can then make intelligent literary conversation at the gym/water cooler about the book “we” just read, and no one will be the wiser?) suggested I ditch the (Apple) Safari web browser that came with my iMac and download Firefox. So lets see if this works. Sadly my index is still nowhere to be found (on my computer anyway – so odd that a few people are getting it. You’d think as admin I’d have access to it if it was on the server. Maybe if you’re seeing it it’s in your cache?).
I spent the afternoon hiding/decompressing (if you can call it that with 4 toddlers underfoot) at K’s house over far too cheesy artichoke dip and a chunky chorizo-bean-tomato-pineapple dip J made that I may have to bug her for the recipe for, scooped up with baked whole wheat pitas (how virtuous are we?) and dragged my feet home at around 5. Having started to cull the contents of my freezer for anything appetizing/usable/bulky I had already committed to making something out of one of the first frosty packages to go: thinly sliced beef that I bought to make Bulgogi (Korean Barbecued) Beef. Fortuitously I had picked up some Shanghai noodles (the thinnish ones) at the market last week and so morphed the two. (The next month I swear is going to be re-runs from last year. I found some roasted squash and ricotta ravioli in there too.)
So I poured equal amounts of soy sauce and rice vinegar and about half that of brown sugar over the beef and let it sit while I made some sesame noodles, and threw a few stalks of asparagus and frozen broccoli trees into the water during the last few minutes of cooking. Drained the lot while sauteing up some sliced peppers and the beef in its marinade, then tossed the lot together in a big bowl and sprinkled it with chopped peanuts. It was OK. The beef was sublime, but the noodles got overcooked as I went to retrieve a naked W from the gritty snow in the back yard, and I don’t think I’ll ever get used to frozen broccoli.
My addiction these days is coffee. I never drank coffee until about 5 years ago, and I still don’t have more than one or two cups a day. Typically Americanos or the odd lattè – because they are espresso-based drinks, lower in caffeine than coffee – which might be why I don’t have any problem drinking them in the late afternoon/evening. It’s comforting to have something to sip on for an hour or so, it’s a way to be sociable that involves food, and I let myself go to Starbucks more often than I used to (partially due to my Christmas gift cards) because I need that something. Here’s a tip: a tall Americano in a grande cup, topped up with whole milk, is like a frugal lattè ($2.36 vs. almost $5, although it’s not as hot and has no foam, but you can drink it faster and rewarm it if you need to) for about 100 calories, or a grande Caffè Misto – equal parts coffee and steamed milk – is only 110 calories; both will provide some protein, too. I don’t add sugar, but one packet of sugar is only 11 calories.
Speaking of book club – I have about 15-20 takers. Yahoo! (If anyone still wants in, email me anytime.) I’m trying to figure out a venue and best time of day, so will email you all directly. It’s hard for me to imagine us all sitting around not drinking coffee and eating cupcakes.
I would do just about anything for a cupcake right now. Anything? Yes, anything.
January 21 2009 | beef | 22 Comments »
This photo was taken at five to 4 am.
That’s how late we managed to stay at the New Year’s eve party we went to. I can’t recall the last time I was out until 4 am, (if you don’t count the night we shot to episodes of It’s Just Food between 10pm and noon the next day). It would have been at least a decade BW (before Willem), and tonight he was actually out with us – he had a 3 hour nap in preparation for the party, but I still can’t believe he stayed (more or less) upright all night, driven by the thrill of playing with bigger boys (aged 7-10) and their big-boy Christmas toys – Rock Band wii and such.
4:42 am – that’s what time it is now. It’s fitting, actually, that rather than spend the day composing my final (but not really) blog post of the year, I’m propping myself up in bed to hammer it out when in fact I can hardly keep my eyes open. Mmac’s idea to linger over this all day tomorrow is bloody brilliant.
My New Year’s eve, instead of being relaxing and low-key as we assured ourselves repeatedly it would be, was instead an act in three parts:
OK, I fell asleep at that point, but it was almost 5 (!!) am, so really it was today anyway. That must have been my delirious logic.
8 am: W wakes up and comes in my room, eventually falls asleep again.
9 am: parents call to say they’ll be here in 20 minutes for their ride to the airport.
9:15 am: dressed, guts churning, standing outside (it’s around minus 100), in waiting with a vanilla-scented poo bag for Lou to do his steamy thing.
10:10 am: present – back from the airport and reheating yesterday’s Tims in the pot I cooked my sticky toffee fondue in last night. Oh yes.
So where was I? A New Year’s Eve in three parts:
Since it’s my last official DwJ day, I needed to make something suitably scrumptious. Jamie Oliver’s Steak & Guinness Pie. I don’t want to down the whole thing between the three of us, so I invite my sister over to share it. She obliges. We sit around the kitchen nook and crack a big spoon into the crackly puff pastry crust and scoop steaming (in a much better context this time, don’t you think?) beef in gravy into our bowls, then top them with peas. We ate the whole thing, but at least it was divided between 4. The crispy bits around the edges were superb.
Jamie’s recipe calls for puff pastry on the bottom of the baking dish too, but I don’t think it needs it. It would end up soggy(ish) anyway, and I’d rather spend those calories elsewhere. Like baking the extra sheet of puff pastry on its own, on a cookie sheet, sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. (Frozen President’s Choice puff pastry comes in a package with two individually wrapped rectangles of pastry, and one fit perfectly over my rectangular baking dish – no need for rolling.)
Also, the cheese was fab, but it would have been equally fab without. I browned the meat first (separately from the veg, just so they’d get a bit of browning) and tossed with the flour before adding the Guinness (this way you ensure no lumps), baked the lot in a casserole dish with a lid, then tipped it into the baking dish I wanted to use; I’d love to do this again in individual baking dishes (those little French onion soup crocks from the 70s would be great), each draped with a square of puff p.
Jamie Oliver’s Steak & Guinness Pie
adapted from Cook Your Way to the Good Life
canola or olive oil, for cooking
3 medium red onions, chopped
3 garlic cloves, crushed
1 Tbsp. butter
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
2 cups sliced mushrooms (optional, and any kind – button work well, but Portobello are nice and meaty)
2.2 lbs. beef brisket or stewing beef, cut into 3/4″ cubes
salt and pepper
a few springs of rosemary, leaves pulled off and chopped
2 Tbsp. flour
1 can or bottle of Guinness
1-2 cups grated old cheddar (white cheddar looks and tastes great)
1 pkg. frozen puff pastry, thawed
1 egg, lightly beaten with a fork, for brushing on top (optional)
Frozen peas
Preheat the oven to 375F. In a large skillet or oven-proof pot, heat a drizzle of oil and sauté the onions over medium-low heat for about 10 minutes, sweating them more than browning them. Add the garlic, butter, carrots, celery and mushrooms and cook for a few more minutes. Transfer to a baking dish (if the one you’re using won’t work) or a bowl. Add a bit more oil to the pan and brown the meat in batches, sprinkling with salt and pepper and rosemary. Return all the meat and vegetables to the pan and sprinkle with the flour; toss to coat. Pour over the Guinness and bring to a simmer, stirring. If the pan you’re using won’t go into the oven, dump it into a baking dish. Either way, add water (or beef stock) to just barely cover the meat.
Cover with a lid or foil and bake for 2 1/2 hours, stirring about halfway through. After 2 1/2 hours the meat should be very tender and the sauce thick, dark and robust; if it’s not, uncover and bake for awhile longer, or cook it on the stovetop to reduce the sauce a bit. Remove from heat and stir in half the cheese.
If your puff pastry is in a block, cut it in half and roll out on a lightly floured surface until it’s about as thick as a loonie (or as Jamie describes, a silver dollar). Place over the beef filling and tuck the pastry around the edges (it doesn’t have to look neat – go for rustic). Lightly score the surface in a crisscross pattern, not cutting through to the filling. Brush the top with beaten egg.
Return to the oven for about 45 minutes. Towards the end of the cook time for the pie, cook some frozen peas. Serve the pie steaming hot, with a scoop of peas beside or overtop. Serves 4-6.
Damn, are we still only on part 1? Good thing everyone is off work today.
After our pie, my sister and I baked a load of potatoes to bring down to Olympic Plaza to my Mom, who was manning the skate shack during their New Year’s Eve bash. We pictured her freezing (she was to be there from 6-midnight, but actually left the plaza at 1:30 am) and possibly needing a potty break. so we trucked down with a little basket of potatoes wrapped in a towel (it’s all we could think of) and a chocolate bun from Manuel Latruwe. When we arrived the line-up to borrow skates was massive (they had a DJ and light show on the skating rink, and live bands, and fireworks at 9 for the kids as well as midnight) and she was short two volunteers, so we jumped in and doled out skates for a couple hours.
We managed to get out before the wave of skate returns, and M, W and I headed over to M and A’s for a 70s-themed party, at which we had jelly balls (meatballs with grape jelly and chili sauce - have I made these this year? if not, there’s reason enough to go on) and smoked salmon devilled eggs, and A made French onion soup topped with toast and Gruyere, baked in these stripy brown tureens she borrowed from her Mom.
I had decided on fondue for the final day of the year, so that was my contribution. Chocolate is the obvious choice – too obvious, I think. Plus I may actually be chocolated out. (Come to think of it, it would have made use of our stash of stocking chocolate – Lindt balls, Toblerone, icy squares, chocolate Santas – all could have been melted down and consumed with fruit.) But since this has been a sticky-sweet year, and also the year I became slightly infatuated with caramel, I decided to do a caramel fondue, which is delicious with white cheddar popcorn for dipping.
But I had been toying with the idea of a sticky toffee pudding, which morphed into sticky toffee fondue. Fortuitously I caught a snippet of Nigella on Food Network, in which she was making a sort of ice cream sauce that she described as liquid pourable fudge and was made with brown sugar, cream and Lyle’s Golden Syrup. (Remember when I said that toast and jam was my favourite food? I lied. It’s buttered toast with Lyle’s Golden Syrup. No question. I can’t even buy the stuff – I kind of pretend it doesn’t exist – because I eat it all.) I searched for the recipe to no avail, and so sort of tried to make something up – really all toffee and caramel are just amalgamations of sugar, syrup, butter and cream. I didn’t have dark Muscovado sugar and didn’t want to make a run to the store, so added a drizzle of molasses to the golden sugar and it turned out fantastic. (At the end of the night we were all sitting around the table eating the stuff straight up out of the Chinese soup spoons W brought to serve his arctic char tartare in. I think I’m still sticky.)
A made me promise to fess up that I jammed on the hot tub last night. True. But no one wants to see post-holiday Julie in a swim suit, no matter how much Prosecco was consumed. Plus we couldn’t exactly leave the 5 zombie boys in the house to their own devices.
Sticky Toffee Fondue
Serve with chunked fruit, small, thin biscotti, and cubes of dense pound cake or fruitcake.
3/4 cup packed dark brown sugar (or golden sugar and a drizzle of molasses)
1/3 cup butter
2 Tbsp. Lyle’s Golden syrup
2/3 cup cream
In a small pot, combine the brown sugar, butter and syrup over medium heat and bring to a boil, stirring often to dissolve the sugar. Boil for a few minutes, swirling the pot occasionally.
Remove from the heat and whisk in the cream. Return to the heat and bring to a simmer again, whisking often. Boil for another few minutes, then remove from heat and cool to warm (you don’t want to serve molten toffee), or cool completely and refrigerate until you need it. Makes about 1 1/2 cups.
Nigella suggests you serve this molten, over ice cream – some solidifies slightly, giving you nuggets of chewy toffee, depending on how long you cook it.
And since this is our finale, my (other) sister made gingerbread letters for the kids to decorate the other night, and she made enough to spell Dinner with Julie. W and all his cousins decorated them, and I thought it would be a fitting final photo for the year, don’t you? (She used the Martha Stewart gingerbread recipe, I believe.)
HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!
Thanks for making this such a wonderful, memorable year.
(P.S. It looks like Whitecap Books might be interested in publishing a book version of Dinner with Julie! Stay tuned!)
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January 01 2009 | beef and dessert and sweet stuff | 46 Comments »
I was determined to make this cake before the holiday season was completely over, having asked for the recipe and bought coconut and pineapple and all, and this morning’s snow inspired me to – big, clumpy flakes that fell out of the sky until noon when they gave way to blowing sparkles that you could see but barely feel on our walk down to the river at Sandy (in this case, snowy) Beaches.
We had a dinner and games night planned at my Mom’s, so I had somewhere to bring the surplus. And I had been pondering the idea of fondue on New Year’s Eve (also technically this blog’s year-long wrap-up) and it occurred to me that this sturdy cake would be ideal for a chocolate fondue, for which I might otherwise make pound cake (anything firm and dense is easy to cut into cubes and won’t fall apart in the chocolate) and thin, small biscotti. In fact, a dense light fruitcake sliced thinly, spread out in a single layer on a cookie sheet and baked until golden would make mighty fine, light and crispy biscotti-esque cookies.
So then I thought of caramel fondue, which is divine served with white cheese popcorn for dipping. No, wait – maple caramel fondue. Or sticky toffee fondue. Or both!
Obviously I don’t have a month to wrap and store it, but it was fantastic all the same. This is R’s recipe as she sent it, but I opted for other dried fruits in place of the candied cherries, which I just find a little blech. (Not to mention all that food colouring. And how do they get the cherries bright green anyway? Green plus red does not make green…) I’m not a huge fan of things flavoured with almond extract, but this worked. I’m thinking that maybe next time coconut extract would be just the thing with all that coconut. If you are a ginger fan, this would make a great vehicle for chunks of candied ginger.
You will need a very big bowl. There is barely enough batter to hold the fruit and nuts together (yum). Bake the batter in two 9″x5″ loaf pans. I’ll also add imperial measurements beside the weights, for those of you who don’t own a kitchen scale.
Light Coconut Christmas Cake
1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
6 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp almond extract
2 1/2 cups flour
4 tsp baking powder
1 1/4 cups crushed pineapple (not drained)
2 lbs sultana raisins (about 7 cups)
1 lb shredded coconut (about 4 cups)
1/2 lb citron peel (I used a small container - 250 g – but you could use a larger one)
1/2 lb halved candied cherries (about 2 cups – I used some cherries, some cranberries, some chopped dried apricots, a few dates)
1 cup sliced almonds
1/4 cup brandy or fruit juice (you could just use more of the juice from the pineapple)
Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs and flavorings. Sift 1 1/2 cups of the flour and baking powder. Combine the fruit and nuts with the remainder of the flour (1 cup). Add the pineapple and brandy alternately with the flour and baking powder. Stir in the fruit and nut mixture. Bake in 2 loaf pans at 275 degrees for about 3 hours with a pan of water in the oven. Wrap in brandy soaked cheesecloth for a month in a cool place.
Makes 2 fruitcakes.
Dinner itself was the slow-roast beef my mom likes to make for occasions such as these – start with an 8-12 pound boneless rolled roast of beef – eye of round is what she usually uses – and preheat the oven to 450F. Put your roast in the oven (in a pan, obviously) and immediately turn the oven down to its lowest setting and leave it for 8 hours. This works well overnight or all day – make sure you don’t open the oven door to take a peek. After 8 hours, turn the oven up to 350F for about 20 minutes to heat it through, then shred with two forks and season with barbecue sauce and serve on soft buns. (Alternatively, you could brown the beef in a frying pan and then cook it on low in your slow cooker all day.)
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December 28 2008 | beef and cake | 11 Comments »
Dinner and dancing (not me, I dance like Elaine) to a live band tonight – mushroom soup with figs and bits of crispy pork in the bottom of the bowl, beef Wellington, and a PB&J pavé (kind of like mousse, squared, on graham crust). I’m sorry, it was difficult to photograph by candle and wine and Christmastreelight.
After, Jeremy took Emily and I down to Tent City and mixed us up some cocktails. (I think I have not yet written a blog post this year after so many cocktails.) Mojitos with something fancy I can’t remember. Martinis with chambord. Cosmos. Something else I wrote down on a napkin and left on the table. I think it had grapefruit juice in it.
Classic Alberta Beef Wellington
1 whole Alberta beef tenderloin, clean (all fat removed)
1 lb Alberta wild mushrooms
4 oz foie gras mousse or fresh foie gras
3 lbs puff pastry (raw)
1 egg beaten for egg wash
Salt and pepper
Sear the whole tenderloin in olive oil on every side and season. Cool down. Clean and finely chop the mushrooms. Sweat them in butter and cook until all the water has evaporated seasoning. Cool down. Mix the duxelle of mushroom with the foie gras mousse gently. Cover the cold tenderloin with the duxelle.
Roll the puff pastry to get a sheet 12 x 36 inches and a ½ inch thick. Brush the edge with egg wash. Place the tenderloin in centre and wrap everything. On a cookie tray cook the tenderloin at 375°F for 35 minutes in the center of the oven.
Let the tenderloin rest for 5 minutes then cut the portion and serve with the sauce of your choice.
Serves 4.
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November 11 2008 | beef and eating out | 4 Comments »
