First Things First
I don’t think I realized just how much I would miss having a kitchen. Before we left, I took some pictures of the kitchen I loved in our old apartment and carried those with us because I knew I would want to look back and reminisce about the meals we had so much fun making. Which I did. I also couldn’t resist going back through some of our old food posts and drooling over our favourites: honey braised short ribs, pan-seared scallops with cèpes and sherry reduction, lamb curry, chèvre chaud salad… at times, I was desperate for goat cheese.
So, true to form, the first thing on our agenda upon return was to cook. Breakfast on Day -1 was eggs benedict with bernaise sauce and some good, fresh coffee. Oh, what a relief to have fresh coffee again after so much Nescafé! After that came Boston Marathon chili, then the short ribs, and then, finally, some nice weather which beckoned us to the grill. We’ve made good use of Makela & Dave’s bbq while we’re here house-and-dog-sitting; one of the first things to go on the grill was some exquisite marinated lamb chops, possibly the best I’ve ever had (though this observation may be as a result of not having had good lamb for 361 days). The second thing to go on the grill was the Ultimate Burger.
The Ultimate Burger, according to some guy we saw cooking on TV, consists of the following: ground sirloin cooked to ‘juicy’, melted swiss, heirloom tomato, horseradish-mayo, caramelized onions, and rosemary bacon on a fresh sesame bun. The half hour we spent watching the preparation of said burger was enough to convince us to try it, especially because we’d been so long without a proper burger. Thus, we have our excellent result, minus the bacon which really seemed over the top. (In hindsight, I would’ve totally done the bacon.)
