sybarites

Step 1: Over a period of 4 months, throw all over-ripe bananas into the freezer.

Step 2: Over a period of several weeks, make numerous sincere promises to bake banana bread; do not follow through.

Step 3: Experience pain as a result of a black, frozen banana falling from the over-stuffed freezer onto toe.

Step 4: Swear that you will make banana bread on the weekend so as to avoid further injury and to clear out some space in the freezer.

Step 5: Forget about banana bread; make cookies instead.

Step 6: Experience pain again (see Step 3 above).

Step 7: Come up with brilliant plan to make Chocolate Chip Banana Muffins instead of banana bread.

Step 8: Actually make the muffins.

½ c. butter
¾ c. sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
2 c. flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1 c. over-ripe bananas (3)
1 c. chocolate chips

Cream the butter and sugar. Add eggs and vanilla, whisk to blend. Mix in dry ingredients. Mix in bananas and chocolate chips, don’t over-mix. Bake at 350°F for about 25 minutes.

Step 9: While they are still warm from the oven and the chocolate is still melty, consume several muffins slathered with butter in quick succession.

Step 10: Reserve the few remaining muffins for breakfast the next morning; serve with cappuccinos while still in pajamas.

Step 11: Give the puppy a little taste because he lays at your feet and keeps them warm as you eat your breakfast.

A few weeks ago, we hosted a small dinner party. Well really, it was a wine party with food but there’s a fine line between the two. It’s lovely getting together with this group as everyone is friendly and talkative and we all appreciate great food and good wine. Conversation always gets louder as the night grows longer but in my opinion, that is a sign of a successful evening.

Deirdre & Marshall

Andrew, Ingrid, Puppy, Marc & Janet

The meal had several courses: Pumpkin Soup with Five Spice Powder, then Roast Chicken Stuffed with Fennel and Garlic, Roasted Beets with Chianti Syrup and Rosemary Roasted Potatoes and, finally, a simple Apple Tarte Tatin with a dollop of mascarpone. I would go into more detail but we didn’t take pictures and somehow, writing about food without the pictures just isn’t as much fun. Suffice it to say that we all thought the meal was scrumptious, except for those among us who don’t like beets (sissies) and those of us who are pregnant (poor, poor Deirdre! we’ll have another wine party when you drop that sprog!).The wine takes center stage for this entry. In order of consumption, here is what we drank:

Prosecco – we usually have a couple of bottles of this on hand for the increasingly frequent occasions that warrant a sparkling white, like, someone announcing a bun in the oven, or Tuesday.

Oyster Bay, a Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand – this is the second time we’ve enjoyed this crisp wine; it matched very well with the rich pumpkin soup.

Ruffino, Italian Chianti – always something we like, full and good at adapting to whatever is being served; it was a pleasant coincidence that our menu consisted primarily of Tuscan flavours.

Ruffino Reserva, Italian Chianti – kind of saucy to compare a Reserva to the first Chianti, just the slightest change in taste.

Zenato, Italian Valpolicella – one of our stand-by favourites; it would be on our 2003/2004 Cheap & Good list but it falls short of meeting one of those criteria…

Sauternes – we hadn’t tried this before but because the recipe for the Apple Tart suggested a Sauternes, we decided to go for it. Marc didn’t have anything really good to say about it at first but eventually warmed right up to it while sipping it after dessert; I guess this is sort of somewhere between a sherry and dessert wine..?

Port, Angove’s Tawny, 1996– a decadent end to a decadent meal. Even though this port is from Australia (Marc is prejudiced against all Australian wines; surely there is something there that he would like), it is quite lovely and relatively inexpensive. Miraculously, Marc agrees and is now a champion for this port.

Good thing Marc has a fetish for glassware; we were able to use a new and appropriately-shaped glass for each wine. What a fabulously sybaritic way to spend an evening! We glided from wine to wine, commenting on the flavours, tasting the difference between regular and Reserve, gradually slipping into a suspended state of bacchanal bliss.

We made a pretty good dent in the wine supply (which we had just replenished that morning) and though everyone had generously brought a couple bottles of wine, we made quick work of those, too. If one glass of red wine a day is good for you, several bottles must be even better, right? Yes?

Somehow, it came up in converstation recently that Marc had not had a cake for his birthday in April. How could this be? He claimed not to have been disappointed but the frowny face would indicate otherwise. Fine, I was in the mood to make a cake, anyway. He requested something with layers and chose lemon-y over chocolate or any other flavours. And because I love ginger, this Lemon Ginger Cake with Lemon-Cream Cheese Frosting seemed like a good choice.

According to the intro on this recipe, it’s supposed to “turn dessert into a celebration”. Pretty big words coming from a little cake! Plus, it had buttermilk in it which, the recipe claimed, makes it a very moist cake that actually tastes better the day after it’s made. (Oh yeah?! We’ll see about that!) Actually, this bodes well seeing as how we are only human and much as we’d like to, we are physically incapable of eating a whole cake in one sitting, especially after having just finished supper. Plus, Marc is still “adjusting to the time change” from setting the clocks back one hour and after a big meal, he tends to fall asleep on the couch at about 8 o’clock. I had to work fast to beat that time deadline!

In between making dinner and watching CSI, I made the cake and frosting and then made a critical error in judgement: while letting the cake cool, I allowed the frosting to stand at room temperature. Rookie error! At 7:50pm, when I was ready to quickly frost the cake in all its layered glory and serve it forth to the increasingly sleepy ogre (ha ha!), the frosting was very sloopy (technical term). I had no time – no time! – to fool around with cooling the frosting so I risked assembling the cake with the sloopy icing and then attempting a flash-cool in the freezer. Rapidly emptied freezer, slapped on the icing, and threw the cake in for about 3 minutes, like that was going to help.

In the end, it was a bit lop-sided because the frosting squished out the sides causing the top layer to kind of slid to one edge, and I had to wake up Marc in order to eat it, but it sure tasted good. And the recipe intro didn’t lie, it really was better the next day. In fact, it was good on each of the next 5 days!

We’ve entered a new realm of the culinary world having discovered the
Crab Burger Po’ Boy.

Because we are so thoroughly Canadian and have no sweet clue regarding local delicacies of the Southern United States*, we were unfamiliar with the Po’ Boy. Research was required and the results were very informative.

“The name ‘po-boy’ is, of course, a shortened version of ‘poor boy.’ The name stems from the fact that a po-boy used to be a very inexpensive way to get a very solid meal. (Extremely detailed description of exactly what qualifies as a po’ boy here.)
Po-Boys are a New Orleans version of a sandwich, but they’re not just any sandwich. You might be tempted to call them a hoagie or a sub, but don’t! A true Po-boy is made with crisp New Orleans French bread, piled high with your favorite delicacy: fried shrimp? Crispy oysters? Sliced roast beef dripping with rich brown gravy? Order them “dresseda” (with lettuce and tomatoes) or not. And don’t forget a splash of Tabasco and a dollop of Creole mustard.”

The pictures bordered on frightening.

The only reason we started down this road is the crab meat in the freezer that needed to be consumed. This recipe featured crab and seemed intriguing, new, a little ‘red neck’. Truth be told, we are both a tiny bit red neck ourselves (though Marc would rather die a thousand deaths than admit this). The fact is, through no fault of our own, we both were raised in Canadian-Texas (a.k.a. Alberta) and we can never escape our past. For example, I have been known to occasionally use “y’all” in a sentence and may or may not know all the words to AC~DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long”. Marc refers to ATVs as “quads” and he drinks rye. Plus, one half of his family is Acadian, which is just a stone’s throw from ‘Cajun.

Because we deviated from the recipe slightly and bought crusty buns instead of french bread, I would argue that our creations were more burger than po’boy. And frankly, I don’t consider crab meat to be terribly red-neck so, really, what we ended up with were more like fancy Filet o’ Fish sandwiches. I have to admit, though, that they were a little disappointing. They tasted just fine but with this recipe’s Louisiana roots, I was expecting more heat and frankly, more flavour. If we ever attempt a po’boy-type-sandwiches/burgers again, we should toss a little quebecois into the mix and make it a poutine affair: fries with cheese curds and gravy on french bread; guaranteed to cure any hangover.

* Once upon a time, my brother Geoff visited our Uncle Al in Galveston. Uncle Al took Geoff out for some real Texas BBQ which means that they drove to a trailer on the side of a country road which had a bunch of barbecues propped up near the back door. They went inside and ordered “2”.
Geoff followed Uncle Al to the food table where a woman wearing an apron ladled some BBQ onto his plate. Geoff, being a naïve Canadian, asked the woman what kind of meat was on his plate. She shrugged and said “I dunno. Parts is parts.” So they sat down on a bench at the one long table to eat. Geoff asked, “where are the vegetables?” A fellow at the table laughed at him and said “Vegetables? Vegetables?! Shoot, my favourite vegetable is fried chicken!”

Well. For a weekday, this meal was certainly a lot of work. If we had been hosting a tasting party and were making this at, say, 2.00pm on a Saturday, with big glasses of wine in hand, the task might not have seemed as onerous. But because it was a Tuesday, and because we were both already tired from work (and halfway into a bottle of red), this recipe for Moroccan-style Aggravating Chicken Phyllo Rolls of Angst with Spiced Tomato Sauce proved itself exasperating. It involved thawing, trimming, chopping, measuring, simmering, skimming, de-boning, shredding, reducing, stewing, blending, toasting, frying, buttering, sprinkling, wrapping, cutting, brushing and pressing to adhere. That is altogether too much friggin’ work for a Tuesday night.

At about ‘shredding’, Marc suggested that this was probably not something we were going to make again. I whole-heartedly agreed (I was hungry already!) and proceeded to bad-mouth the sauce which I was taking pains to carefully skim of its fat. Back and forth we went, berating this recipe for its confounded complexity until, in the end, we were shouting at the mustard seeds to “quit rolling around and adhere, dammit!” We chucked them in the oven and paced and drank until we could pronounce them ‘browned enough, sheesh’ and finally, sat down to eat. Unfortunately, they were quite good.

These fall into the appetizer category and it might seem curious that we made these for supper. Indeed, it is but we were trying to use up the extra phyllo leftover from when we made something else… hmm, I forget what. Anyway, Moroccans must really like to cook because this took two of us about two and a half hours to complete. Though, Moroccans must really like to eat because the rolls were definitely tasty. If they were served at a fête as part of an appetizer tray, I would have constantly been edging my way closer to the tray in order to score a few more before someone else got to them. The spices involved – ginger, cumin, turmeric, pepper, coriander, cinnamon, paprika – all served their purpose exceedingly well against the chicken. Phyllo, of course, is always good. The mustard seeds added their fair share of tanginess but the tomato sauce was a bit dull; I wish we would’ve added some more cayenne and/or more smoked paprika. Or better yet, if we had any of the harissa that Mom & Dad brought back from Tunisia, that would have been ideal to mix into the sauce.

All in all, I’m afraid we’ll have to make these again. *sigh* When we do, we will have to make a huge batch and freeze them thus avoiding the frequency of the episodes where we cook using nearly every dish in the kitchen. I remember my Mom working with phyllo when I was little and in my mind it stands out as being delicate company food that required a lot of work. I know why, now. I get it. I will never again capriciously wolf down phyllo treats without thinking of the hard work of the poor sucker who made them.

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