Archive for the 'cheese' Category
It’s a good day today. It’s the day I get to kick off a week long giveaway, in which every single day I get to stalk someone down and thrust into their hands an enormous box of cheese, tied with a bow. That’s right, for an entire week, right up until Christmas Eve, I’ll be committing Random Acts of Cheese! Except that they won’t totally be random – I’m not Ellen DeGeneres – although I kind of wish I was… no, in this contest, you get to choose someone who you want to win. Get it? And then it’s a surprise! It’s all about giving, and cheese, and making people happy when they least expect it. And what could be more happy-inducing than a surprise box of cheese? Not that there’s anything wrong with chocolate, but Pot of Gold is so 1986.
Check out all that cheese! (Yes, I moved it after taking that photo. Lest Lou think Christmas came early for him.)
Calgary Co-op was generous enough to contribute their Discovery Box of cheese for my crazy cause. Many of them. Yesterday I was like, “hey! We should surprise people at work and home and give them a box of cheese!” And they were like, “cool! how many boxes do you want?” They, like Mike, didn’t even question my crazy idea, but just jumped on board with it.
In each box you’ll find six cheeses – real ones, not wee sample sizes – Oka, Saint-Paulin, Rondoux Triple Crème, Rondoux Washed Rind Cheese, Rondoux Chèvre, and 3 Year Old Grand Cheddar. Add some wine and it’s a party in a box. (Truly – it’s what we’re starting our Christmas party with tomorrow night: open the box, put each cheese out on a big cutting board, fill in the gaps with crackers and fruit and nuts and chutneys and pickles, and you’re good to go.)
So here’s the deal: it’s not for you, it’s for someone you want to surprise with a Gift of Cheese. Fun! To enter, comment here and let us know who that person is and why they should get a cheese box. You can also enter on Facebook or twitter, by tweeting out who you want to win – just include @dinnerwithjulie or @CalgaryCoop, #randomactsofcheese or all of the above, to make sure we see it.
Every day – Saturday, December 17th thru Friday, December 23rd – we’ll pick one person, and deliver the cheese to them. I say we because Mike Santa is coming with me. (If you’d like us to provide a spectacle with said cheese delivery, that can totally be arranged.) If we choose your winner, we’ll contact you for their coordinates – we’ll need to know where to find them. (They’ll need to be in Calgary, not that I wouldn’t love to fly anywhere to make a special delivery!)
Let’s do it!! Random Acts of Cheese!
December 16 2011 | cheese | 89 Comments »
Ah yes, I am Canadian. You can tell by the fact that I had poutine for breakfast. Three kinds, even.
In honour of Canada Day – which is, impossibly, coming right up – I give you poutine you can make at home. I know you’ll need a day to locate cheese curds – you can find some at Springbank Cheese (which has no connection with the Springbank outside Calgary, I’m afraid – it was named after a cow. Sorry. They are in Ontario though.) or at Say Cheese! at the Crossroads Market (both sell packets of St Hubert’s poutine mix too), or really any good cheese dealer. It must be curds though – don’t go grating mozzarella on top and defacing a Canadian icon.
I used that new French fry technique I told you about – and as they simmered themselves to golden perfection on the stovetop (pure poetry, that) I went about assembling toppings – I made some topped with pulled pork and barbecue sauce, and another topped with mushroom and Guinness gravy. A third had Montreal smoked meat hacked apart and added along with the curds. You could do a beef bourguignon poutine, or make it Italian style with marinara sauce. You could top yours with a fried egg, or a chunk of foie gras. I think a baked bean poutine is in order next – not only because I think beans are great, but because I like saying bean poutine.
So really, all you do to make your poutine is have the sauce and curds ready as your fries come out of their oil; drain them on paper towels, salt them and top right away with curds and sauce (or gravy, or whatever) so that the curds melt ever so slightly, and serve to deserving recipients. How to win friends and influence people, the Canadian way.
One Year Ago: Waffled French Toast
At the Family Kitchen: Maple Bran Waffles
June 29 2010 | cheese | 32 Comments »
This is me and my pal Pierre A. Lamielle (wouldn’t it be cool to have the initials P.A.L.? I thought so too). He wrote a cookbook, then flew to Paris and got a big fancy award for it. Which he totally should have – Kitchen Scraps is bloody brilliant. It’s like no other cookbook you’ve ever seen – totally readable in bed, good for a laugh, each page a literal work of art. Stories, jokes, morals, humour. Whorehouses, the three bears, cupids, Roman soldiers with six-packs – it’s got it all.
So to celebrate I got a copy to give away for that happy event of days gone by we used to call Free Stuff Fridays. I figured it would only be fitting to make something from his book for dinner tonight, but Mike had a show, W has a birthday party (he got his first real invite from a kid at school – not a relative or friend of ours – sniff) and I went to get a sneak peek at the new CHAR CUT (it opens on Monday!) and then to judge the Lawson Lundell Celebrity Hors d’ Oeuvres Competition (a fundraiser for ATP) – which is my long way of saying there was no need to cook dinner tonight. And tomorrow night we have a fabulously cheesy dinner party to attend (don’t worry – you’ll get a full report) – so I had resigned to making a batch of brownies (not much of a let down, that) when I noticed instructions on how to make ricotta down at the bottom of a page containing a risotto recipe.
I’ve made mozzarella from scratch before, and pseudo-mascarpone, but ricotta has been on my to-make list for eons. I love how Pierre’s recipe fits in a little box – this is why we get on so well – he doesn’t use too many words. (And the words he does use are well-thought and hilarious.) Making ricotta is not at all complicated, nor does it require rennet tablets or other odd ingredients called for in other cheese-making processes, and I did it while unloading groceries. Dumped a 4L jug of whole milk into a pot and cranked it up as I unpacked, and when it came to a simmer pulled it off the heat, stirred in 1/4 cup of vinegar (you could use lemon juice, even – but Pierre says plain vinegar is the most neutral) and lidded it for an hour. Longer, in fact, because I completely forgot about it, and when I got out of the shower with 10 minutes before I had to leave and remembered the ricotta I ran down to the kitchen in my robe and scooped the curds out of the pot into a sieve to strain, not even bothering with cheesecloth. And it worked: I had freshly-made ricotta.
(They whey, by the way, is very nutritious – don’t dump it out, but keep it to use in pancakes, muffins, waffles etc. – I funneled it back into the milk jug and still had about 2 1/2L.)
So to recap:
Homemade Ricotta
Bring 4L whole milk to a simmer (190°F) in a large pot. Remove from heat, add 1/4 cup white vinegar, stirring only once. Put the lid on and leave it for an hour. Gently scoop out the curds with a slotted spoon into a sieve (Pierre suggested a cheescloth-lined colander, which would work too, but if you don’t have cheesecloth no biggie) – if you like, let it sit in the sieve overnight in the fridge to drain – you can leave it until it’s as dry as you like. Keep the whey in the fridge and use it for baking, soup, etc. Makes about 1 lb. fresh ricotta.
And now, as it’s well past midnight and I’m far too busy digesting far too many different types of animal (11 restaurants x 2 or 3 hors d’oeuvres each, and some I might have had seconds and thirds of) I can’t tell you about them all. But I do want to mention the ones that really stood out – the winners we chose, and the things I ate most of – chef Darby Kells from the Concorde Restolounge in Aspen Woods made killer braised lamb shank tarts with brandy soaked cherries and wild game reduction – the reduction takes him 3 days to cook down into an essence of meat with the consistency of maple syrup – and the lamb shank is braised at 250 degrees for a full 8 hours. Marvy. The Main Dish did cherry pink bacon with aged cheddar on grilled panini topped with cherry braised pork belly (AND HOW DID I MISS OUT ON SECONDS OF THAT?) chased by sour cherry ice cream floats. Dandy. Open Range made Mexican tamales with braised beef and cheddar, wrapped in banana leaves – open faced duck ravioli and espresso ice cream on flat, chewy chocolate chip cookies. But the most memorable thing I ate tonight was the pink lemonade cocktail (served in a shot glass) topped with a strawberry-mascarpone Swiss roll covered in Pop Rocks – yes, Pop Rocks! – created by Kristin, Mariah and Jenna of Trader’s Grill in the Marriott. It may sound hideous, but it totally worked – the sweetness of the cake followed by an intensely sour shot of lemonade, and the Pop Rocks – it was like the scene in Ratatouille when Anton Ego takes a bite and is instantly sucked through a wormhole to his childhood. They popped pleasantly in our mouths – not noisily, as they do straight – up – adding a sort of effervescence to the experience. It was fab. And so rare to come across something edible that was totally original!
So – it being the bleak midwinter and all (in Calgary, anyway), and my freezer once again overfloweth, I thought I’d start a new game next week – another rousing rendition of Name That Frozen Baggie. I really do need to reduce the contents of my freezer, and so thought we could have some fun with it – so next week I’m going to pull stuff out in the morning and post it on Twitter, and see if anyone can guess what’s for dinner that night…
And so for Free Stuff Fridays – for a copy of Pierre’s fabulous new cookbook, Kitchen Scraps, what’s in your freezer?
February 20 2010 | cheese | 110 Comments »
One of the many benefits of making your own crusty loaves of bread on a regular basis is a plethora of bread ends to turn into the very best croutons ever. Honestly, I have been spoiled forever and will never buy a box of them again. Not that I ever really did before.
So I made some. And remember those spiced nuts I put away for a salad later? Well this is it. I had so been looking forward to a big salad since that no-shop drought… Mike went and bought a box of organic salad greens. I finely cubed a butternut squash and roasted it, and had some soft goat cheese. The whole thing was orchestrated like a perfect salad symphony.
And when the time came to assemble it, I pulled the box out of the back of the fridge. W had been playing with the temperature control, cranked it up as high as it would go, and the greens were frozen. Solid.
So I ran over to the market, but they only had Romaine. Which was a bit of a letdown. But I made up for it by – drumroll, please – instead of sprinkling the spiced nuts overtop, finely chopping them and then rolling walnut-sized balls of soft goat cheese in them to coat, making little goat cheese truffles that were crunchy-spicy on the outside with a soft interior; they would have been great for a party plate, but worked perfectly atop a salad as you can cut through them with your fork like soft butter.
Really, you could do this with any kind of soft cheese and finely chopped toasted nuts, and any variety of spiced or candied nuts, given a pulse (do it gently to avoid making nut butter, although that would be pretty damn tasty too) in the food processor.
Good news! I have been scouting out some stuff for FSF, and have been promised some fun and yummy things. Which I will wait to have delivered into my own hands before I give away.
Meanwhile, I’ve been pondering whether my idea for this week’s Free Stuff Friday is completely silly or not. (I imagine opinions will be split on the matter.) But I keep coming back to not – because of the whole idea of our food having a history and a story to tell. So this week I’m going to instigate our first (and perhaps only, depending on how it goes) Free-for-All Friday and give away 40 year old sourdough starter that originated in the kitchens of the Banff Springs Hotel, to anyone who would like some, complete with instructions on how to keep it going once it takes up residence in your own fridge. And of course you can then pass it on.
Depending on how this goes I’ll either spend a morning delivering jars all over town, or we could coordinate a coffee somewhere, or something. (We’d be like the groups of moms with babies, only all with jars of smelly starter.) But if you love the idea of a sourdough starter and want to get your own going from this monster, here’s your chance. Put your name in, and next week I’ll compile them and figure out the logistics.
And as a consolation prize for those of you who are not in town (or don’t want starter), I’ll draw for a copy of One Smart Cookie. (I take all your comments and then use a random number generator to pick a number – or sometimes I yell downstairs to Mike and say “pick a number between 1 and 58!”)
This week I’d love to know about those dishes that have a story to tell. Perhaps a history in your family, or with friends; those that have been handed down from past generations, or anything you do for a particular holiday or season. Or… whatever you ate for dinner last night.
March 28 2009 | appetizers and cheese and salads | 52 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 »
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