sybarites

While at the grocery store I had a craving for Kraft Dinner. I volunteered to eat it while Janet was away for the weekend, but it seemed that she had the same craving. We ate it that day for lunch.

I have a scientific approach to cooking KD, while Jan’s a free-style girl. I cook the pasta for exactly seven minutes, otherwise it’s too mushy. I usually use a little extra butter which must be melted in the microwave to to keep the pasta hot—same with the milk. Everything must be measured.

Since the last time I made KD, Kraft added a second set of “healthy” instructions to cut down on the amount of fat. They suggest to use 1/3 of the butter and add more non-fat milk. If I’m polluting my body with processed food, why would I do that?

As much as I was craving KD, I still expected to be somewhat disgusted when eating it. It was actually a pleasant and satisfying experience. I would like to say that it brought back warm memories of childhood, but my days of bachelorhood were fresher in my mind.

Last week, on the very cusp of the release of the new Michelin Guide, we made a decidedly simple supper of Cheese and Salami Salad Sandwiches. The only thing Michelin-y about this meal is that the onions we used in the salad are red and the book has a red cover. But we laced the sandwiches with arugula which poshed them up a bit.

There is an interesting post on another blogger’s site commenting on an article written about the release of the new publication. The article was fairly à propos for me as I am nearly finished reading The Perfectionist: Life and Death in Haute Cuisine which describes the life and death of Bernard Loiseau, a 3-Star chef who suffered from bipolar disorder and sadly committed suicide upon the loss of one of his stars. The book has proved really fascinating to me and enlightening in terms of the culture and history of French cuisine. Plus, I am now able to recognize some names of prominent chefs of the past and know more about the big name chefs of today- their background, influences, inspirations, styles.

The blogger, Pim, provides some insight into the serious foodie world as she lives in San Francisco and has an enviable lifestyle which involves traveling for work and she is, therefore, able to actually visit some of the restaurants in the guide. Meanwhile, I shall continue to pine away in coldest Canada (it is snowing outside my office window as I type this.) In her comments, and in the article itself, I find myself particularly curious about the choice some chefs are making nowadays to “dumb down” the cuisine and focus less on obtaining a macaroon (as the Michelin stars are nick-named) and more on providing client-friendly food and atmosphere. I’ve never been to an étoil-ed restaurant (though sometime, before I die, I will have!) so I really don’t have an understanding of what, exactly, makes these restaurants so special– written like a true plebian. I would imagine that half of the refinements which elevate an establishment above its peers would be lost on me. Still, I am curious enough to put it on my life’s to do list.

At any rate, our meal was very pretty, though a little heavy on the red wine vinegar. When I make this again, it will be with smoked Gouda, instead of plain, and with fewer capers, as well.

[ed. this is the first time EVER that we have written and posted simultaneously for the same meal. Crazy.]

Behold! Cheese, in all its cheesy, glorious glory! I think that if I were to start a religion, it would be based on the worship of cheese. Pictured at left are the earthly incarnations of the Cheese that we ate last week for dinner.

[Note: we had actually planned a real meal but Marc lost money on his Google stocks and to feel better, he suggested that we eat cheese.]

One definition that I found on the Interweb says that religion is “a cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion.” Ergo, the activity that I pursue with zeal and conscientious devotion is the eating of The Cheese. Ha!

In my religion, most of the deadly sins would be reversed and revered as holy behaviour in relation to The Cheese: Lust for, Gluttony involving, Avarice towards, Wrath of not having, Pride of having eaten, Envy of others eating, Sloth as a result of having eaten. The Holy Trinity would be The Milk, The Rind and The Mighty Bacteria. Cows would be holy, same for sheep and goats. We would not eat them and would decorate them with leis of flowers. Reincarnation is out; the caste system is out. But maybe long ago in a galaxy far, far away, someone might have obtained Nirvana whilst sitting under the Bo tree and eating cheddar.

What elevated this dinner to super-holy was the crackers. They are a dark and be-seeded variety made by Rainforest; I’ve only ever seen them for sale at Janice Beaton and at the Cookbook Company. They are very crisp and have sweet, sort of molasses flavour that is dead brilliant with a soft cheese, like Brebiou Pur Brebis. (I haven’t been able to find that cheese in my Encyclopedia of Cheese though, so maybe it is a variety specific to Canada. Might have to do some cheese research.) Also, this evening of worship included Marc’s first attempt at home-made ciabatta bread (which, incidentally, he CANNOT say without adding an extra “–batta” to the end). I know it did not meet his high standard of excellence in the art of bread, but it tasted pretty good to me and provided a very effective medium of getting pâté from knife to mouth. The congregants of my religion would live short, but very sweet, lives.

Last week I had an urge to eat cheese, an urge originating in Jan’s training of my palette. I had finally cashed in a gift certificate from the cookbook company, which I received as a present in 2004, for Raincoast Crisp crackers. There was also bread left over from my first bread baking experience.

This all led to the need for a few cheeses and a paté from Janice Beaton. The Brebious Pur Brebis, a French sheeps milk cheese, is now one of our favorites. I can’t quite recall the name of the other two. One was a hard cheese which had just arrived at the store and the other a goat’s milk cheese. Jan could better describe the cheeses. I also picked up the Terrine de Foie with Pink Peppercorns—a little fatty organ meat to finish off the plate.

I had intended to eat this as a little snack. It replaced supper.

This is the first post with our new blog. Blogger was a great introduction, but WordPress gives us a lot more options. Particularly, I’m looking forward to using tags. Should you want to look at food postings only, you can click “Food” in the right nav. The image editing and wysiwyg editor are quite impressive too.

While Jan was away over the weekend, I went bread crazy. I made the same ciabatta as last week with a few apricots thrown into the mix. I forgot to coat them in flour after I boiled them, but it worked out ok.

Bob’s Restaurant Bread was nearly a disaster. After spending ten minutes kneading the dough, I realized the second set of yeast was still sitting on the counter. In an attempt to salvage the dough, I mixed the yeast with a small amount of water and worked it into the dough. Miraculously, everything worked fine.

I nearly ruined the tuna sandwiches as well by chopping cilantro instead of parsley. This turned out to be a happy accident. We usaully make tuna sandwiches by going through the fridge for odd bottles and leftovers to mix together. This one had tuna, mayo, créme fraîche, capers, cilantro, celery, basil, garlic and sun dried tomatoes—super tasty.

Update: Comments can now be made without having an account. Thanks to Faith for the note.

I had never made bread before. Of course, I never pick the easiest recipes. If it’s not bakery artisan bread, it’s not worth making. Epicurious has a recipe for ciabatta that only requires two days and only one ingredient we didn’t have, bread flour. I thought the few dregs of semolina flour would be sufficient.

The instructions called for a standing mixer, which we don’t have. The dough was much drier than the recipe stated on day one and much wetter before it went into the oven. After sitting in the fridge overnight it was suppose to look like thick oatmeal instead of hard dough.

In the end the bread was tasty, though a little heavy and not quite the right texture. Some of the hard dough bits turned into soft, dense spots. I planned to have the bread finished for the salami and cheese sandwiches which we had for supper—not even close. It made a nice snack in bed when buttered and a great sandwich with Tuscan ham, arugula and Gouda for lunch.

For Christmas, Makela was gifted with the latest version of Cranium™. Unfortunately, she was the only one in her family with any desire to actually play the game. Lucky for her, she has nerds for friends (i.e. us) who offered to host a little wine-tasting-and-hors-d’oeuvres affair with Cranium™ on the side.

I had the day off that Friday so happily spent my day cooking away in the kitchen. The night before, I designed a menu of small foods upon which we could graze as we played. I was inspired by an episode of Behind the Bash on Food Network which profiled a ridiculously expensive wedding (the dress alone cost $13,000 USD) where adorable mini-foods were served. I am enamoured of the mini-foods! There were tiny grilled cheese sandwiches for which mini loaves of bread were baked, sliced and then layered with gruyère and individually fried; there were mini-cheeseburgers(!) with specially prepared mini-poppy seed rolls that were baked and dressed with little lettuce, a slice of a cherry tomato, a wee, grilled beef burger and an appropriately draped slice of cheese; and baby pies, complete with latticed-pastry top, which looked like cartoon pies that one could eat in two bites. To say that the labour involved in making this $700USD per person meal was exhausting is an understatement. But I was inspired to make a meal of finger foods!

So, whilst [quite competitively*] playing a couple of rounds of the board game, we grazed our way through
Chickpea, Garlic and Parsley Dip with toasted pita chips,
Crostini with Spiced Crab and Shrimp Salad,

Skewered Marinated Flank Steak,

Blue Cheese, Walnut and Cranberry Crostinis,
Spicy Shrimp Wrapped in Snow Peas,

Sliced Chicken Salad with Chili-Ginger Vinaigrette,
Caramelized Onion Tartlets with Crème Fraîche,

and Cardamom Applesauce with whipped cream. All of these things turned out just as I had envisioned; I will definitely be making them again. Plus, I think my efforts to produce five low-cal dishes out of eight was quite gallant, rather. (At least for my own sake- I knew I was bound to eat way too much so at least I could take a stab at tempering the damage.)

I have since recreated the blue cheese crostinis and the chickpea dip, both of which received excellent reviews at their respective appearances. Their simple recipes make me seem more clever than I am as they are simple enough to recite from memory; they shall maintain permanent residence in my grey-matter database.

We drank some form of white wine (sadly, this detail is lost), La Vieille Ferme, LoTengo, and, so as to improve our board-game-playing-skills, a glass of Maple Whiskey from La Belle Province. Makela and I “improved our skills” a little too much and disastrously lost at Taboo, a phenomenon heretofore UNIMAGINABLE. I demand a [sober] rematch. At which I will serve mini-grilled cheese sandwiches.

* before we started, Andrea had to clarify several rules of play because “some people I play with change the rules as they go”. This would seem strange but I think these are the same people who play Ultimate Frisbee; collectively, they represent a new level of competitiveness.

On Tuesday night we roasted a beast, baked some potatoes and steamed a few carrots.

Here’s a nifty thing: we got a Beef Chart! From our butcher, we picked up a free copy of a two-sided beef.org poster which explains all the different cuts of beef, the part of the beast that produces each cut, how each type of cut should be cooked (including done-ness temperatures in both Celsius and Fahrenheit), beef trivia, safe practices for handling raw meat, vitamins contained within said raw meat and a picture of a happy, omnivorous family.

Despite this very informative chart and the relatively easy preparation of this meal, we totally fucked it up. (Except the carrots which were much less fucked than the rest.) We started this blog to brag about all the cooking we do but I would be remiss if I did not mention the episodes in which we burn things, sever fingers, eat things that the dog may have already licked, add salt instead of sugar or a tablespoon instead of a teaspoon (this only occurs when the substance being measured is a volcano-hot spice) and continue to prepare foods that have briefly come in contact with the floor. It would cheapen the rest of this site to project an image of consistent perfection (like anyone we know was ever fooled, anyway). What follows is a list of everything we did in a less-than-perfect manner on Tuesday:

1. We opened the good wine before we started cooking; should’ve finished the house wine first and saved the good stuff for the meal.

2. The recipe called for beef tenderloin but we cheaped-out and got inside round. There is nothing wrong with cheaping-out but when faced with roasting it, we had a choice: roast the beast according to the instructions for cooking a tenderloin cut in the recipe for Roast Beef Tenderloin with Wasabi-Garlic Cream [incorrect] or roast the beast according to the instructions on the poster for cooking an inside round cut [correct]. We chose the former.

3. We intended to make cubed potatoes tossed with lemon and scallions. However, instead of cubing the potatoes, we sliced them up with the mandolin just because we have so much fun using it. This shape of potato resists even the best efforts to toss, with lemon and scallions or otherwise.

4. We started cooking the carrots WAY too early. Way too early = kinda mushy.

5. We were forced to bake the potatoes in a kind of gratin with butter and scallions. We did not bake them enough. Some were still raw.

6. The roast emerged from the oven. Beef.org said to slice against the grain of the meat, so what do we do? Slice with the grain.

7. We plated and ate raw-ish potatoes, kinda-mushy carrots and cooked-to-toughness beef with wasabi-garlic cream. The cream was really good; it distracted us from the fact that we may have been eating leather.

Funnily enough, the leftovers were quite delicious. The potatoes were no longer raw and the meat somehow mellowed (because it rested overnight?). The wine was extraordinary: AlphaZeta, a Valpolicella from the Veneto, just north of Verona. Even leather with wasabi couldn’t crush this velvety red.

Pictured below are the Chipotle Burgers of last week. I had high hopes.

The apathy I direct at these burgers is proportional to the apathy exhibited by Canadians on federal election day. The papers said that nearly 66% of 33 million people voted and it seemed that there was some pride in this number. Um, why? Relatively speaking, it is better than the voter turn-out in the last two elections (2000 & 2004) but can we not do better as citizens of a democratic nation? For crying out loud, some people in the world would give their left arm to be able to vote in a free and fair election. It astonishes me how some people continue to ignore the privilege of being able to voice their opinion. One voice in 33,000,000 is quiet but is still better than no voice at all. I don’t even really know who or what to blame for the lack of interest; the would-be voters? the weather? an imperfect manifestation of a democratic government? evil? Céline Dion? (She is rich. And Quebecoise. She could be a part of a great sovereignist conspiracy to trigger apathy in Canadian voters with her music. The message could be subliminal, in her songs. Think about it.)

Amusingly enough, some people are vehemently dedicated to their apathy. “I don’t care. I don’t want to care. It doesn’t matter and it never will. Also, I love Céline Dion.” I would like to see what would happen if their right to, say, travel freely about the country were taken away. And their right to watch TV. Oooh, ooh, AND, the right to eat meat. Now who needs democracy- huh?! Wanna vote? Psych!

And, another thing- it’s actually insulting to those Canadians who do vote; why should they be forced to carry the burden of being responsible and making decisions for the rest of the population that is too lazy to look out for themselves. Oh sure, The Lazies will accept public medicare or speak freely in public, or accept a Canadian pension, or put money into a tax-sheltered RSP but they are not willing to pay for those privileges with the smallest of fees: getting off of the ass and casting of the vote. Honestly, it is unfair to accept these privileges without having paid; especially when the price is so small. Go ahead and spoil your vote, even, if it means you recognize how lucky you are to live in a place that grants you at least, basic rights and freedoms. Whew, I should stop. Pretty soon, I’ll start sounding like Rush Limbaugh.

The best part is that as I type this, somewhere in Quebec someone is being “sponsored” by the government to research voter apathy.

P.S. I choose to bitch about voter turn-out because if I try to actually discuss the results of the election, it angries-up the blood and I get too upset to type.

The photo is flattering—really. If it weren’t for the hunger and effort of preparation, the appearance of Chicken Biryani would have turned my stomach. However, this was one of the most flavourful and interesting dishes we have ever made. The recipe is from an episode of America’s Test Kitchen, which we saw the weekend before. It seemed interesting enough that I braved my no-cooked-raisins rule. Wikipedia tells me that currants aren’t raisins, so I won’t be dropping that rule anytime soon.

Under all that rice and yogurt is a chicken thigh, the best part of the chicken. The rice was par-boiled in a spice stock of cardamom pods, fennel seeds, fresh ginger and cinnamon. In the end, those flavours became a pleasant, sweet earthiness, rather than a typical spiciness. The browned chicken, caramelized onions with jalapeno, rice, fresh cilantro and fresh mint were layered in a pot to finish cooking. When topped with the yogurt sauce, it was absolutely divine. We’ll be making this one again soon. I would make it for guests if I were more willing to share.

Store the rice and chicken separately from the yogurt sauce should you have any leftovers. This was not obvious to me after three glasses of wine. Jan had the unfortunate experience of eating microwaved yogurt sauce for lunch one day.