sybarites

Every Wednesday for the past two months, Ingrid and I have been meeting to learn Italian. This is like the blind leading the blind. Neither of us speaks the language (though Ing did take a couple years’ worth of classes in university) but we figured we could probably muddle our way through it. I borrowed a “Learn Italian in Your Car” CD from the library, bought some crisp, new exercise books, Ingrid dragged out her old notebooks and tests and we set to work.

So far, we’ve come along fairly well. I definitely enjoy this class way more than I would’ve at some kind of ‘structured’ course because we go at our own pace, it doesn’t cost a thing, we’re planning a field trip to the opera, and our classes always involve Italian food. And wine. Oh, the wine. Something about speaking Italian makes us really suck back the vino. I can tell, because my notes at the end of the evening are always misspelled with sections crossed out everywhere and tend be kind of shout-y when written in all-caps – DOV’E LA MIA NOCCIOLA? IL GATOPARRDO E ALLA SPIAGGIA.

But I digress. Thus far, we’ve cooked the stereotypical Italian fare: spaghetti with meatballs, pizza, lasagne, minestrone, etc. and some just-the-other-side of ordinary: roast pork with fennel, parmesan risotto. Last Wednesday, I chose something that qualifies as Italian only for the fact that it contains spciy Italian sausages. So, past-perfect conjugation of strong verbs and Lentil Stew with Sausages and Spinach.

Marc always helps make supper on the weeks that I am hosting our class (indeed, those meatballs he made are arguably one of the best things we’ve had so far), and this time he made almost the whole thing. Ing said she really like it. Marc said that we would definitely make it again but I’m not so convinced, though you wouldn’t know it from the two bowls that I ate. It was good enough but the lentils were a little too center stage. I would have preferred a tiny bit less salt, too. But hey, not every meal can be an epicurean masterpiece. One must have evil in order to have good. (Marc- this was far from evil, you did a great job and you are too good to me, cooking for my class like you do; I criticize only the recipe.)

Speaking of good and evil, we also disagreed on the wine we tried the other night: Wente, from San Francisco. I like it; it tasted a little of cherries but not too much. Marc did not like it, no. LUI NON HA PIACCIUTO IL VINO.

And then we have the meat pie, an example of which is seen at left. Disregard the blurriness of the picture and notice the fluffy potatoes which were browned on top of a slow-cooked, steamy pile of vegetables and meat.

As the weather cools – or rather, colds – quite rapidly, we turn again and again to our Slow Food cookbook for comfort food and inner warmth. We consumed several mountain-ed plates of Cottage Pie– even the name invokes comfort. What was basically a simple ground beef and veggie stew with smashed tatties on the roof turned out to be a new favourite.

Beef in its ground form is not generally something I yearn for due to years of being subjected ground beef cooked with cream of mushroom soup and served in front of The Muppet Show, but this dish went a long way towards redeeming its reputation. I suspect that anything that employs the title of “beef pie” can easily slide into Disgust-dom but this version didn’t follow that path; it was moist like a casserole, with veggies that still retained some of their original flavours and crunch (i.e. carrots) and the potatoes made a perfect crust with which to soak up any lingering gravy. I guess that’s what the hour in the oven did to finish the dish: it gravified the filling.

Much like Mmmm, Pie (Volume I), we made one big pie and then a couple of little ones for leftovers and this trick is genius; brought some in to work the next day and was thinking about it all morning. Marc’s mini-pie never made it to work.

How much food, I wonder, would one have to consume for the fat contained therein to actually accumulate on one’s thighs whilst eating? Imagine if such a thing could occur? I’d never look at cheese the same way again, i.e. with lust and abandon. Anyone who knows me, knows that cheese is the one thing that I could never give up; when playing the What Would You Rather Give Up For The Rest of Your Life game, I always pick cheese over anything else. Cheese beats cookies. Cheese beats beer, chocolate, all forms of hard liquor and candy. Cheese narrowly, narrowly beats wine.

Anyway, the point is, it’s amazing that I like Pad Thai so much considering that it involves no cheese. In fact, considering that it calls for The Mysterious Fish Sauce (a.k.a. feet sauce), it is remarkable that I like it so much. Maybe it’s all the superbly fresh ingredients or the tamarind paste that is simultaneously bitter and kind of salty or the peanuts or the shrimpies –yum! Ultimately, who cares what makes it beautiful, as long as it is so? My only complaint is that it can be kind of finicky. Like, this time, we slightly under-cooked the noodles, slightly over-cooked the shrimp and added just a little bit too much tamarind paste. I still ate until I could eat no more but these points were duly noted for next time.

We should really make this for M & D when they arrive. It never fails that the first place we go when their plane lands is to the Vietnamese place next to the 7-11. They crave good pho and spring rolls and vermicelli when in Europe and so, before we do anything else – drop off the bags, have a drink, anything – we go straight for dinner. Because they crave Asian food so much, I suspect that they’d appreciate this Pad Thai. Especially accompanied by a few Big Rock McNally’s? Some Coors Light? Eh?

If such a thing existed, I would argue that Osso Buco is near the top of the Hierarchy of Food. In my mind, it qualifies as one of those old-world, classic, handed-down-through-the-generations, hard-to-perfect type of recipes. It’s like Coq-au-vin or Bouillabaisse or Vin Diesel; they are intimidating and can seem complicated but, when you get down to the nuts and bolts, are really quite simple.

Marc has been wanting to try this for a while now; I’ve been kind of hesitating because it would be an expensive dish to fuck up, but it was de-intimidatized* thanks to two factors: America’s Test Kitchen made it so we could use their recipe, and the label on the package of veal shanks that we bought said “Ossco Bocco”. Honestly, if the veal people are misspelling it, than it cannot be that big of a deal.

Turns out, I had my knickers in a twist about nothing; this thing was dead easy. Maybe it acquired its daunting reputation when people still used wood-burning ovens and the tricky part was maintaining a steady temperature for a long period of time. Even though we did screw up on part of it (added the tomato juice with the tomatoes) and I burned the palm of my hand on the pot, we ended up with a more than decent Sunday-night supper. Too, there was polenta to coat the bottom of the bowls and soak up the rich sauce; sauce is the bee’s knees.

However, I regret to say that this classic, smarty-pants recipe can’t beat braised lamb shanks – much like Vin Diesel cannot, under any circumstances, beat James Bond. There’s something about James/lamb shanks that add an exquisite, tasteful edge to what would otherwise be simply a decent Vin/Osso Buco. Even if you try to dress up the Vin/Osso Buco with a tuxedo/gremolata, it’s still the same piece of plain, old meat underneath. Plus, which one goes better with martinis? Uh-huh. And we all know that martinis are at the top of the food hierarchy.

* The Simpson’s taught me that I can make up and use any word I like, as long as the context of its use explains the meaning, i.e. “A noble spirit embiggins the smallest man.”

I borrowed this title from one of my new favourite sites on the Interweb: Gallery of Regrettable Foods. The dreadful, primarily gelatin-entombed foods pictured here are accompanied by delicious comments by the author of the site. A particular favourite was the gelatin mould of meat(?) which was described as “bleached, washed, plucked Skull of Klingon”.

Also of note in the category of foods intended to disgust is the 30,000-calorie sandwich. The maker of the beast explains the impulse to attempt this world-record of gross by writing “Damn, I was hungry, though.” Oh! Well, gee, that explains everything! No wonder you made a $47 hoagie with enough calories to clog the arteries of a horse- you were hungry! In the meat category alone, there is bacon, ground beef, corn dogs, ham, turkey, pastrami, roast beef, bratwurst, and braunschweiger. Ah, gluttony; the meatiest of the deadly sins. Would you care for a glass of evil with that?

In the decidedly un-gross category, we have our Friday night supper of Pork Medallions with Mustard-Chive Sauce and Butternut Squash Risotto.The pork, I have made before and it was enjoyable. (Though next time we make pork, I’ll be tempted to try to replicate the mustard-sherry sauce from the Wildwood.) It was the risotto that I was anxious to try because just reading the recipe made me hungry. Unfortunately, we got a little carried away with the quantity of squash and because we added so much to the risotto, the rice was a little undercooked. But that didn’t detract from the ginger’s ability to shine through from the depths of the dish.

Altogether, these two recipes made enough to feed two of us for three meals and still that pales in comparison to the Sandwich of Sin.

Before I start writing about the Lamb Stew with Couscous, I have to know: what exactly is a cous? A Grain? A Seed? Is the noun in singular form, indeed, the ‘cous’? O Mighty Internet, please answer my questions! (Ever notice that you never see God and the Internet in the same picture? Uh-huh. Think about it.)

The American-centric definition was found to be thus:

What is couscous?
Couscous is a coarsely ground semolina pasta. The grain is a staple in many North African countries. Over the last decade, it’s cropped up on American menus and dinner tables.

I couldn’t find a clear answer on the whole singular vs. plural thing but did find a brief description of the etymology of the word from etymonline:

1600, from Fr., ult. from Ar. kuskus, from kaskasa “to pound, he pounded.”

Which begs the question, could it be used as a verb? Could a person be couscous-ed?

Anyway, the Lamb Stew. This was another recipe from my favourite cookbook, bought on a whim from the clearance rack at 80% off, Food & Wine’s Quick from Scratch cookbook. There is a whole series of these cookbooks but I can’t find the one I have online anymore. Too bad, it’s a brilliant book.

Basically, it was a stew of tomatoes, cauliflower and chickpeas (also a confusing element as it is neither chick nor pea) with Moroccan-spiced lamb meatballs. For a quick little meal, it was great. It made a lot of stew so there was plenty leftover – an excellent quality in a recipe. We had a bit of a hard time trying to find ground lamb, though. Luckily, we have a great butcher – Second to None Meats – who ground some fresh lamb while we waited. I don’t think I’ve ever had ground lamb, it tastes different because of the need to cook the meatballs all the way through. It actually came off a bit gamey in the first bite but after getting used to a new version of lamb-flavour, I liked it.

Sammy, on the other hand, LOVES lamb more than anything else (except for maybe cheese and car-rides) and did his very, very best begging in order to get a taste. However, I was in my Responsible Owner character so cruelly denied him the pleasure. Probably he’ll get some of the leftovers, though. As my Dad says, “That dog lives better than half the free world.” Look at him, being the life party…

Last year during Present Season, Marc bought me this great cookbook: Slow Cooking: Not So Fast Food. Incidentally, I think a cookbook is really the most perfect gift to give as the giver then becomes the receiver of many a great meal. I had been admiring the book at McNally Robinson a few weeks before Xmas and he was so thoughtful as to remember and surprise me with exactly what I wanted. Awww.

We’ve tried several of the recipes from this book but always have to plan the cooking way in advance because when they say ‘slow’, they ain’t foolin’. The descriptions of the recipes say things like “…from the Roman era…” and “..from the peasant kitchens of ancient Gaul…”. This makes it even more intriguing; imagine tasting history! Generally, these recipes take between 3 hours and 2 days to make (i.e. let stand in the fridge overnight) but they are always worth the extra effort. Marc made the best cheesecake I have ever had and the recipe came from this book. It would be nice to have a schedule that would allow for more cooking like this… How much does it cost to be independently wealthy?

So, the pie: it was Chicken Pot Pie with Mushrooms and Tarragon. It was kind of amusing to make, in a how-much-time-can-I-waste sort of way. The instructions said to use butter to brown the leeks and set aside; use butter to soften the mushrooms, set aside; use butter to caramelize the carrots and celery, set aside; brown the bacon, set aside; and so on. Then the cooking of the chicken breasts (we splurged and bought the good, free-range stuff from the butcher), then more simmering… At the end, the filling got a dollop of crême fraîche before it was reunited with the chicken pieces and covered with a home-made, tarragon pie crust. Marc even made the decorative flourish so as to match the picture in the book (yes, I can hear you– we already know we are nerds, thank-you). THEN, 2 hours in the oven. By the time it was done, we were all but drooling in anticipation because of the gorgeous smell emanating from the kitchen. Really, I could practically taste the smell, it was so good.

I’d like say that we savoured every morsel as we slowly sipped our wine but it was actually more like ‘wolfed every morsel’ and ‘guzzled our wine’. At least they matched; the wine was La Vieille Ferme, I forget what year, from Côtes du Ventoux made by the Perrin family. This is one of only two wines that qualified as a finalist in our 2003-2004 search for Cheap & Good. (The other one was LoTengo, if anyone cares.) This is no small feat because I am frugal to a fault and Marc has discerning tastes. (Read: I am wicked-cheap and Marc is a wine-snob.) This wine has always been very good to us and we figured it would go well with it’s long, lost, French-country cousin, Chicken Pot Pie. Once again, we were very pleased with our $9.99 bottle.

This meal rates as a solid Super-Like.

Posted by Marc Robichaud Comments Off on Mmmm, Pie
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Sybarites