sybarites

[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.

A couple of years ago, I visited the Tuscany of my dreams.

I have a theory; I believe that a destination –city, beach, country – is whatever one makes of it. For example, one will encounter the same number of people who, when visiting Venice, would call it smelly, over-crowded, touristy, expensive and confusing, as people who would remember it as enchanting, quaint, historic and delicious. What makes these two people see the exact same place and time so differently? I think it might be attitude. Where one person looks at the canals and sees the garbage in the water and a construction barge floating next to the ugly scaffolding spread over a bridge which is supporting the weight of a steady stream of sweaty tourists eating bad ice cream, another person might look and notice the surprisingly fluid motions of someone unloading heavy tiles from a precariously balanced barge, the bright flowers in a window box near the bridge, the sun shining brightly off the water, the tourists laughing and the church bells in the background. I know, because I’ve been both people. After the traveling I’ve done, I’ve learned to recognize my dispiritedness and then force myself to mentally stop, find something beautiful and focus on the romanticism that a place has to offer. It is with this conscious romanticism that I visited Tuscany.

Ever since Frances Mayes wrote Under The Tuscan Sun, I’ve been devouring and re-devouring her books. That she is an exceptional writer of prose is clear, but the way she chooses to describe things seems familiar to me; hey, I know that attitude– it’s my romanticism! I suppose one could surmise that it is easy to find things that are beautiful in Italy, with all the art and architecture and food and people, but I think it’s more than that. I think her descriptions, and later, my real-life experiences, were rooted in the idea of mandatory enjoyment.

At any rate, this “mandatory enjoyment” has made for some lovely memories of places I’ve been. Every time I eat white beans, I recall that the word “Tuscan” means bean-eater and then I remember a particularly pretty day I spent in Cortona, Tuscany. I visited Cortona because, of course, that is the town near which Frances Mayes lives and I couldn’t resist trying to sleuth out some of the places she describes in the book. (Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough time to try to find her house but that will be for another day. I continue to collect clues from her books.) It turned out that it required very little effort on my part to see the beauty in that town. It was hot when I was there; I walked up and down steep streets, into cool, shaded alleys and through parks on the edge of the hill town with breath-taking views of the surrounding countryside. This was the first place I had been where I heard cicadas chirping. The sun baked everything and somehow seemed to make the air thicker so that echoes in the town square didn’t seem sharp but rather muted. I had lunch on a stone balcony at a trattoria overlooking the piazza; light pasta with tomato sauce, sausages and fresh raw vegetables and a jug of red wine. It was all so charming and so much like the Cortona that I had imagined that I stretched that lunch out for hours, lingering over my meal, watching the people move about below, ordering an espresso, breathing and listening and trying to embed a memory for each of my senses. When it was time to go (to drive off to Venice, in fact) I was strolling instead of walking. I could’ve very happily stayed there for weeks and not done much more than I had that afternoon. And then I telephoned Ingrid and woke her up to describe how unimaginably perfect Cortona is.

The point is, I’m so happy to have had the experience of that day and so pleased when something triggers my memory of it. Like the beans in this White Bean, Potato and Arugula Soup (a recipe from Kansas City, Missouri, no less).

The soup was nothing to write home about but it was worth having made it for the delicious little glimpse into my past.

Again, my colleagues were envious of my lunch. Ha ha! It is so sweet to flaunt a really, really, ridiculously good-looking lunch. The flip side of that is when we don’t have leftovers and I am forced to join them in their canned soup sorrow. Those are sad times; what are office trolls to do when they don’t even have a lunch to envy?

Yesterday, it was Pork Stew with Fennel and Butternut Squash. If it isn’t already obvious, we are hooked on the squash. It snowed on the weekend so I think that makes a stew taste even better, let alone this one with the perceived buttery flavour, thanks to the squash. Wow, this was tasty: slowly braised pork pieces, tender-yet-crispy fennel, a sublime reduction of stock with onions, garlic, pancetta and wine all sauced over some egg noodles… those poor trolls didn’t stand a chance! I love the compliments whilst standing in line for the microwave.

I think the only thing that would’ve made this better is if the pork had braised a little slower so as to make it more tender. It was good as-was but could’ve been even better if it had been falling-apart-at-the-touch-of-a-fork tender. Though I wouldn’t sacrifice the toothiness of the veggies because there is nothing sadder than limp and tasteless veg where stew is concerned.

With this, we had a bottle of Folinari Cabernet Sauvignon; we had to open a fresh bottle, you understand, because it was required in the stew. And we had to finish it because it was Sunday and it had snowed and it was just too delicious not to.