Archive for the 'bison' Category
I realize there was nothing about today that called for baked pasta. It was 30 degrees outside by 10 am, and is still so hot I have to intermittently go outside and stand in W’s kiddie pool to cool off. But yesterday when an avalanche from the freezer almost crushed Lou it became apparent that we needed to free up some space. Even our ice cube trays were displaced, and today ice could have come in handy. So the first thing that I took out (or rather kind of fell out) was a ziplock baggie of bison and blueberries that I had cooked up before we went away. I thawed it, stirred in the last of the canned diced tomatoes from Vij’s curry, some tomato sauce sauce and boiled some whole wheat rotini. The usual Willem Chow. But then it got cold and he didn’t eat it, and I had gone and made way too much, so I left it all in the skillet, sprinkled it with some cheese and baked it just long enough to rewarm the innards and melt the cheese. I had to turn it on to bake a Key lime pie for tomorrow morning anyway, so at least we got dinner out of it.
July 21 2008 | bison and freezable and one dish and pasta | 2 Comments »
Who needs corn dogs when there’s this kind of meat on a stick?
The question of what to make Mike for his birthday dinners for the rest of his life has officially been answered.
I had an extra rack of Carmen Creek bison ribs I had rubbed down with dry rub at my cooking show at the Stampede this afternoon, but not cooked. After all, like beef or pork ribs they need a good couple hours of slow cooking to tenderize the meat and release it from the bone. So I brought them home and popped them in the oven at 275 F from 3:30 until 6, then pulled them out, painted them with barbecue sauce and threw them on the grill for a few minutes, just to finish them off and caramelize the outside goo. You could do the pre-cook in advance if you’re having a party – do them a day or two in advance, keep them in the fridge and then slap them on the grill for 20 minutes to heat them through when you’re ready for them.
For Lou, it was torture. He followed W around in the desperate hope that he would drop a molecule of meat, or that he might lower his hand full of Flinstone-sized rib so that he may sneak a lick. No such luck. W knows full well that he needs to walk around the house with his hand straight up over his head in the air if he’s carrying food, particularly meat or cheese.
I hate to admit I was too tired to make a complete meal out of it – we walked around moaning over our mammoth bison ribs, and then ate a mango in a meager attempt to balance things out a bit. My only consolation is that bison is so much leaner than beef – half the fat of beef, and less fat even than skinless chicken or turkey, or even halibut. (I suspect this would not apply to bison ribs – all ribs tend to be fatty, but part of the appeal of bison ribs is that they tend to be meatier and less greasy than other types.)
We didn’t actually eat ribs AND burgers, but I had the mixture left over from making meatballs at the Stampede too and so cooked it up as burgers for tomorrow’s lunch. As I’ve mentioned before, ground bison makes great burgers, and if you chop up some fresh or frozen blueberries and add them to the mix (in this case just a pound of ground bison, salt and pepper) you’ll sneak some extra nutrition into them while also adding moisture – it’s a good thing to do. It doesn’t work as well with stronger-tasting, sweeter, more acidic berries like raspberries or strawberries, but blueberries and saskatoons are just mellow enough to work. Pulse them quick in a food processor if you want them more finely ground – they blend right in to meatballs, meatloaf and burgers, or even when you’re cooking up some meat for spaghetti sauce or sloppy Joes. It’s getting easier to find, although bison is usually sold frozen in the large grocery chains – chubs of Carmen Creek bison (which is antibiotic and hormone free!) are at Safeway, Save-on, IGA, and Overweightea, and Sobey’s has fresh ground bison in the meat display case.
July 09 2008 | bison and on the grill | 5 Comments »
Yes, I know, I am an extraordinarily boring person this week. Sorry about that. Sorry too for the hideously blue bowl I decided in haste to dish my boring chili up in, not even thinking (after 170 days) that I would be required to take a photo of it. I’m particularly proud of my buttered sliced bread garnish – it reminds me of dinnertime images of the 50s when they’d put out a section of Wonder Bread slices in a serving bowl on the kitchen table. (This is not Wonder Bread. It is grocery store sliced bread, but at least it’s whole wheat. Honest. When I see Wonder Bread I can’t not think about Clarissa Dickson Wright’s reference to “slimy white slice”.) Tomorrow promises to get more interesting, as I’m cooking for my Dad’s birthday on Saturday and Ramsay Rocks on Sunday, an event I’m emceeing (and cooking for the volunteers – there will be plenty of food for everyone else though). You should come.
I do have a confession to make: I love anything tomato-saucy with buttered bread. I have been known to make a spaghetti sandwich, just to create a vehicle for the tomato sauce. Sometimes I just scoop up chunky tomato sauce leftovers with bread. W tried to mimic me tonight and made quite a mess of the patio. Lou was happy though. (I mean John Cusack.)
Again, chili isn’t even particularly summery. But it is cowboyish, and Stampede is coming up faster than I care to acknowledge. When I was 12, I won the Calgary Stampede Chili Cook-off. (The adult one, not a special cook-off for kids; let me tell you, there were some mighty unhappy contestants who took their chili very seriously and were not at all pleased to be whupped by a 12 year old girl who sort of threw a bit of this and that in the pot and then didn’t even particularly remember her recipe.) This year, I’m hosting the second annual kids’ chili cook-off at the Stampede on Kids’ Day. We don’t have enough contestants yet, so if you have kids under 14 who are interested in entering their chili – the winner then gets to make their recipe on the ATCO cooking stage and be on TV, if they want to – email me!
I have never used a recipe for chili. There is no reason to. I cook up some lean ground beef or bison with a chopped onion, maybe a red pepper, in a drizzle of canola oil, then add a couple cans of beans, drained to get rid of the salty bean sludge (I like things beany – red kidney beans for sure, sometimes baked beans in tomato sauce, sometimes white kidney or black beans) a big can or two of diced tomatoes (whole is fine too), and about a cup of salsa if I have some. A good heaping tablespoon or so of chili powder – which is really high in fiber, being simply ground up dried chiles – and sometimes a small spoonful of cocoa and/or instant coffee or espresso, just to give it some depth and colour. Coffee is the cowboy way, after all. Decaf works just as well. Simmer it all for about an hour to break down the tomatoes. That’s pretty much it. If you want to add a can of tomato paste, that’s always a good idea – tomato paste is such a great source of lypocene – much higher than fresh tomatoes, as they have been cooked down and condensed. Tomato paste is also great as pizza sauce. It’s nice and thick, and quite sweet tasting, being just pure tomatoes. Kids love it.
The biggest flavour factor when it comes to chili is time – I always let it sit in the fridge for a day or two before we eat it. It’s edible of course the day you make it, but always better after a day or so. It also freezes very well.
For some reason, yesterday’s spaghetti and today’s chili tasted fantastic. No thanks to any particularly stellar culinary skills, but more likely due to the fact that I spent a good 4 hours completely secluded from anything edible in the CBC newsroom beforehand. They are really onto something with this concept of bon appetit.
June 19 2008 | beans and bison and freezable and one dish | 7 Comments »
Sorry. I know, spaghetti ranks right up there with Cheerios when it comes to interesting dinners. It’s what Mike suggests when we’re tired and can’t think of anything else to eat: as in, “why don’t we just have spaghetti?” But it’s so boring! I always whine. I’m not sure why – I do like the stuff. And clearly it’s not something we eat five nights a week.
I’m working afternoons today until Friday, filling in for Jenny Howe doing the afternoon traffic on the Homestretch on CBC Radio One. Today we had a baby moose on Springbank Road, a fleet of chicks trying to cross Deerfoot, a deer, a fire, and I don’t know how many collisions. It was insane to keep on top of. So Mike made dinner. Spaghetti with the plainest of sauces; sauteed onion, red pepper, and about half a pound of ground bison, which I know I’ve mentioned before has less than half the fat of ground beef, and is leaner even than skinless chicken, turkey or even halibut. The problem with bison is that it typically gets treated like beef, thus overcooked and dried out, and then people think they don’t like it. It’s not at all gamey; if you’re hesitant to give it a try, ground bison in spaghetti sauce or chili is a safe first step. Half the cooked up onion-pepper-bison combo went into a jar of President’s Choice Extra Garlic tomato sauce (our current favorite, and superb as a pizza sauce) for the spaghetti, and the rest got turned into chili with the rest of the can of black beans from yesterday. (Chili is always better after a day or two in the fridge, so tomorrow night is already taken care of.)
Apparently the pasta got overcooked when he had a bit of a crisis, realizing the movie (the new Bob Dylan one with Cate Blanchett – very excellent if not a little cryptic, except that I fell asleep halfway through) was due back like right now and the pasta was on the stove, and he had to gather up the dog and kid and make a run for it. But when I got home hungry and all trafficked out there was a pot of spaghetti on the stove, it was absolutely delicious.
June 19 2008 | bison and pasta | 1 Comment »
It’s a boy!
We planned to get a new washer and dryer this weekend; instead we got a dog. A border collie-husky cross, 10 weeks old, about the same size as W. So, two toddlers. My sister has been on a mission to find the perfect dog, and brought him home for a trial run on Saturday to ensure she wasn’t allergic. She was, but her allergies didn’t kick in until we spent several hours discovering how mellow and awesome he was, and so this morning we couldn’t bring ourselves to send him back. He is as yet unnamed - we are open to any and all suggestions. I want to name him John Cusack, but Mike won’t go for it.
So between the chaos of suddenly getting a dog (!!) and scrambling to finish Animal, Vegetable, Miracle before I interview Barbara Kingsolver tomorrow morning, there wasn’t a lot of time to make dinner. Luckily, my mom brought over some fresh bison burger patties from Sunterra, which we tossed on the grill alongside a couple Portobello mushrooms. Grilled Portobellos make great burgers on their own, but Mike has always fantastized about topping another burger with one. I must admit, it was far easier and meatier than sautéing a panload of sliced button mushrooms, and fit snugly on top of the burger. To grill a Portobello mushroom, pull out the stem and scrape out the gills with the side of a spoon – the gills tend to be bitter – brush with oil and grill. If you like, marinate it in balsamic vinaigrette first – mushrooms are like sponges and will quickly absorb any flavours they meet.
And that’s it. One of the mushrooms broke into several pieces as W pretended it was his umbrella, but they are meaty enough that we grilled the pieces and it worked out fine. I realize the burger photographed above is lacking anything green; to be truthful I’d far rather have a salad on the side than adorn my burger with a couple measly leaves and a slippery slice of anaemic tomato. (To be even more truthful, I didn’t bother with a salad, just ate the burger. On the couch.)
We have a dog. What have I done??
May 25 2008 | bison and on the grill and sandwiches | 20 Comments »
« Prev - Next »
