Now with Spam!

Sorry folks - I've had a spamtastic day here, so I'm turning on the word-verification filter to try to get around it. Sorry for the extra step, and my apologies if any real comments got nuked with the spam, spam, spam, eggs, and spam that I've just deleted.

Grrr...

World Blog Day

I have been remiss in not providing a links section to some of the many food blogs that I read regularly. I do plan to add one in the not-too-terribly-distant future, but it hasn't happened yet, obviously. However, in honour of World Blog Day, I will share five remarkable food blogs whose pages I visit regularly, whose updates I look forward to more than any newspaper or magazine (well, except, perhaps Cooks Illustrated), and with whom I feel some form of culinary kinship, despite never having met any of them. It's hard to pick only five, because I read about 15 regularly and even more on a periodic basis.

Without further ado, and in alphabetical order:

Bakingsheet - Nic in Los Angeles produces volumes of stunning food with charming anecdotes from cooking school classes and simple, easy-to-follow recipes.

Chocolate & Zucchini - Clothilde in Paris manages one of the best known food blogs in the world, and has a forum full of helpful and interesting folks from around the world participating. Lots of well written short pieces on the food she finds and eats in Paris and occasionally elsewhere.

Delicious! Delicious! - Caren details her career as a personal chef to a hollywood actor (anonymous, of course) in movie-script format. The little stories are entertaining, the recipes are simple but impressive looking.

Domestic Goddess - Jennifer in Toronto has an impressive link archive of worldwide food blogs, but her own site is well worth perusing, with fun little notes on her personal culinary escapades.

Orangette - Molly in Seattle writes charming and delightful, highly personal, diary-like entries and posts fabulous recipes. Hers was the first food blog that I encountered after starting this one, and is the gold standard of its kind - terrific recipes (I've made a number of them without a flop), great photography, and thoughtful prose. After playing catch-up in her archives, I very nearly discontinued my own. I'm a stubborn cuss, though, and don't stop talking easily.

There are so many more: Pumpkin Pie Bungalow, Food Ninja, Lex Culinaria, Oswego Tea, Culinary Adventure...

I promise to install a proper links section soon.

Wine Club: BC Small Lots

The August wine tasting - BC Small Lots - was unexpectedly good. I don't know why I'm still amazed whenever I have good red wines from BC, but I still have this reflexive cringe from my very first (to my knowledge) BC red back in the late '80s - a Calona Vineyards Pinot Noir. I didn't know much about wine in general at the time, and I certainly didn't know anything about Pinot Noir, other than that it had a cool sounding name. You know, set yourself up with some film noir and a glass of Pinot Noir - it just sounded like it should be fancy and mysterious, and maybe a bit elitist. It should probably be wearing a beret. However, even in my utterly uneducated state, I disliked the wine intensely. It may have in fact delayed my interest in wine by several years.

How much has changed! While generally a little overpriced, some BC red wines can compete palate-to-palate with wines from Europe and beyond. This tasting consisted of seven BC wines that are produced in limited releases - one sparkling and six red. Many of these are not available in liquor stores, although you may have some luck in wine shops, or ordering from the vineyard directly.

Photo Credit: D. Langtry

Whenever we have a sparkling, that's where we start first. It's poured last, and the tasters fall on it with a cry without waiting for their peer's glasses to be poured. nv Blue Mountain Brut is where we started, and it was widely agreed to be a pleasant wine. It had a sharp, crisp scent of apples on the nose, and a sort of Strongbow-like flavour of cider on the palate. There was simply nothing outstanding about it, and several tasters noted that they could buy a lot of good sparkling cider for the $22 price tag. Still, it's always nice to start with a sparkling wine, yes?

We moved on to another Blue Mountain, this time a magnum of the 2000 Reserve Pinot Noir Striped label. A previous tasting of the much sought-after Blue Mountain Pinot Noir (regular) revealed it to be disappointing, so we were keen to see how this one stacked up as it was both a) the reserve, and b) a magnum size (wine generally tastes better if it is stored in a larger bottle than the standard 750 ml). It was pretty enough, with a garnet red colour and a clear rim, and even the scent of chalk and rock wasn't off-putting - Pinot Noir can have some fairly funky odors. Unfortunately, the palate was equally rocky, and very thin-textured, with no fruit or pepper flavours at all. It seemed rather sour to me, and I moved on relatively quickly. $75 for the magnum - yikes!

Happily, I moved on the the LaFrenz 2002 Cabernet Sauvignon, from Naramata, at $27. Bloody and opaque, with just a faint hint of orange showing at the rim, the nose yielded very little. The palate however, was a musky combination of cherries and plums, with a faint acridity. It had good body - lots of body! - and it was generally concluded that a strong game meat would be ideal to stand up to the fierce flavours. Possibly something cooked with juniper berries...

The next wine was the 2002 Sandhill Syrah Small Lots - Phantom Creek at $30. This is not a Burrowing Owl Sandhill, by the way, but a very interesting boutique wine. It was the kind of dark opaque red that almost looks like a black hole - as though light would have trouble escaping its surface. The legs were thick, quick to form and fast moving. The nose was unusual, consisting solely of plums and salt-licorice. The palate was even more unusual, evoking the words "dark, bark, metal, rocks, licorice, and salt." Almost unanimously, tasters declared it "kind of weird" but many of us kept going back to our glass, sipping and frowning and sipping, and gradually confessing a sort of growing fondness for it.

We eventually put our glasses down and picked up the 2003 Oak Bay Meritage, at whopping $35. The composition of this wine was 40% Merlot, 30% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Cabernet Franc. It was a pretty, bright red with a cherry-pink rim, a fair amount of acidity and a little red fruit on the nose, and a sour-cherry flavour that was quite refreshing. The price tage makes this one a little too steep for what is essentially a fruit-and-cheese sipping red, or the second bottle at a dinner party, but it wasn't bad at all.

2002 Burrowing Owl Meritage, however was worth its $35, which is a relief to those of us already housing one in our wine cellars. The composition of this wine was 20% Merlot, 60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 20% Cabernet Franc. The wine is a dark ruby colour, opaque, and with good body. The nose is a little rocky, but the flavours were fruit, spices, nuts and a hint of Christmas. This is a very tasty wine, and worthy of the gold medals and attention that it gets.

In the grand tradition of saving the best for last, our final wine of the night was the 2003 Black Hills Nota Bene, comprised of 46% Cabernet Sauvignon, 34% Merlot, and 20% Cabernet Franc. This is a heckuva wine for $34. Dark, bloody red, with dark red fruit, flint and raspberries on the nose, the flavours were smooth, balanced, fruity, and with just a hint of pepper. The body was elegantly velvety without being overly thick, and the entire glass just disappeared to the soundtrack of universal approbation.

Six out of Seven isn't a bad haul, and although this tasting has done nothing to improve my outlook on Blue Mountain wines, it is comforting to know that BC reds are improving at a remarkable rate. Now, if only we could keep the prices under control...

Previous Tastings:
Portugese Table Wines
Pinot Noir
South African Red Wines
Spanish Wines
Summer Patio Wines

Sesame Sambal Chicken

Fortnightly update!

The main Always in the Kitchen website has a new recipe:

Sesame Sambal Chicken - with variations for the barbeque/grill or oven

and a new essay: Scotland the Brave

"...There has never been a shortage of good local ingredients to work with, but somehow Scotland fell into a similar post-war fug of bland and indifferent cuisine that until recently plagued England."

Enjoy!

Return to the Kitchen: Crepes!

It always feels a little strange, stepping back into my kitchen after being away from it. True, I was only gone ten days, but that's a pretty long time to go without cooking anything, as far as I'm concerned. I'm always slightly concerned that I'll have forgotten how to do something important, or that I'll fail to remember simple things like monitoring pan-temperatures, or whether something has been left in the broiler. Such things have never come to pass - yet! - but I am always still a little concerned.

Today also brought a return to a dish I've not made in a long time: Crepes. I've always been partial to them, but when I travelled to France on my Big Trip ten years ago, I fell in love with them. Sweet, savory, stacked, folded, on a plate, or in a folded paper cone, crepes were my number one hunger-buster on the streets of Paris, and they're awfully good at home, too.


Since I have been primarily cooking lighter meals since we got back from Scotland, I decided to make a breakfast of savory crepes. With their payload of a single egg and but a half-teaspoon of canola oil, they fit well enough in with my criteria that I decided to include slices of Freybe's Italian sausage - part of their line of lower-fat chicken and turkey sausages that I use in a number of supper dishes (like Sausage and Hominy Chili) quite frequently.


Like a number of food bloggers, I've recently been pillaging the Williams Sonoma website for its recipes, and the one that I decided on for my crepes was their Black Pepper Crepes with Goat Cheese and Tomatoes. Since I was using a 9 or 10" non-stick frying pan instead of a WS crepe pan, I only got five crepes instead of eight, but I also was using between a third and a half cup of batter for each one, too - so that sort of makes sense. I also decided that the black pepper element of the crepe batter was negligible, so next time I may well add more pepper - or perhaps grind additional pepper over the crepe as it cooks on its first side, so the fresh black pepper sinks evenly into the batter and is locked in when the crepe is turned.


I also discovered that I did not need to re-season the pan between crepes, as the recipe suggests. Perhaps that is an advantage of the non-stick pan over the crepe pan, but it worked in my favour, so I'm not complaining.

I had forgotten how much fun crepes are. You can prepare them in advance. You can fill them with practically anything. You can dress them up or down. You can freeze them. And, you can microwave chilled crepes to heat them back up!

Eating and Drinking to the Sound of Bagpipes

I am home again, after ten days abroad in the lowlands of Scotland. We stayed primarily in Glasgow, due to our attendance at WorldCon, but managed a couple of days east in Edinburgh.

There is a sound to the city of Glasgow, and trite as it may seem, it is almost the sound of bagpipes. At night, when you've left the window open to lose the muggy air, there is a certain hum that is almost like a whispery drone of bagpipes just starting, in the background. Toward the end of our journey, it became a full on pipe sound, as the Piping Festival got underway.

I am almost at a loss about where to start, so I will start where my day usually started, with breakfast:

The Charing Cross Guest House boasted a full, cooked Scottish breakfast included with the room cost, so it made sense to avail ourselves of it as a cost cutting measure, if nothing else. As it turns out, it wasn't bad. True, it was meat-heavy and desperately rich, so after a couple of days we took to ordering our breakfasts somewhat modified. For Palle, that meant asking them to hold the beans - somewhat anemic and tomato-y as they were - but for me it meant refraining from the Lorne sausage - a strangely rectangular patty of blended pork that came to resemble spam more and more in my mind as the days went by.

While the egg, the rasher of bacon, and the half-tomato (usually a little less than ripe) need no explanation, the Lorne sausage (in some other hotel it might be black pudding instead) and the potato scone were something of a novelty. The flat, boxty-like, fried potato bread that they rather optimistically refer to as a "scone" is actually a little on the sweet side, which can be a bit disconcerting against the richness of the meat and eggs. Breakfast was made complete by a glass of juice, some brutal coffee (served with milk, as is the fashion there, rather than cream) and copious amounts of toast and delightfully yellow, flavourful butter. Sometimes there were oatcakes, too, and there was always cold cereal available from the counter near the coffee pot.

Of course, this is not the average breakfast of your average Scotsman. Cornflakes are a more likely bet. The very idea of facing this onslaught of calories had me humming "Scotland the Brave" under my breath on my way down the stairs each morning. It's not that it was bad - it was quite tasty. But I am not used to facing such hearty, meat-laden fare day in, day out.

I have already described the delightful dinner that we had at The Piper's Tryst, but I failed to mention the entertainment. While we were dining in this charming little restaurant (which is attached to the Piping Hall and a hotel) there was a wedding in progress in the hall next to us. What this ultimately meant was that the groom and groomsmen, in full traditional kit (skein dhu and all) were taking turns at the bar for a belt of whisky or two, bridesmaids in colourful satin gowns were lurching around breathlessly, and at one point the bride, all young freckled shoulders and elaborately arranged fair hair, swept through on her way to collect some of her bridal party. In all, a merry time was had by all.

Our dinner at The Piper's Tryst (the more sweetly named, for the wedding taking place) remained the culinary highlight of our trip, although there were other delights in store. It was there that Palle tried haggis - as did I - and discovered it to not be that bad, after all. My previous experience of it was ten years ago in Edinburgh, and I was decidedly unfavourably impressed at the time. This example was far superior, particularly in that the contents were much more finely chopped than my previous sample.

Over in Edinburgh, we stayed at perhaps the most half-assed B&B ever. The people were friendly, but not terribly good at their jobs (it was primarily staffed by young people who were in residence in the ancient building themselves). The breakfast was blessedly continental, because I don't think I would have been too confident about the cooking skills of the motley lot in charge. However, it was during the Edinburgh festival, and we had little other options for available accommodation, outside venues so decidedly uppercrust that they advertised inclusive butler service. Since even the inexpensive places in Scotland were burning a fierce hole in our pockets (prices are elevated during the festival, sadly), this was clearly out of our league... this time, anyway.

We were staying in the picture-pretty suburb of Leith, right where the Water of Leith meets the Ocean, on the same block as a pub called the King's Wark which had originally been built in the early 1400's as a seaside residence for James I, then turned variously into a plague hospital and then, in the early 1600's into a pub, which it remains to this day.

The butcher shops along the main shopping artery in Leith all had delightful displays, including the requisite haggis and Scotch brisket. The fishmongers also had lovely displays, including a lot of shellfish from the North Sea, and - oddly enough - farm fresh eggs.

I at first thought that Grampion was the breed of chicken for sale, but it turns out to be a misspelling of a UK poultry wholesaler, which is infinitely more disappointing. Grampian is also a region in Scotland, but that doesn't seem to be relevant to the chickens sold here. Shocking prices, like everything else here.

While doing the usual touristy things such as exploring the Royal Mile and touring the Edinburgh castle (questionable value, really) we planned for lunch at the renowned restaurant The Witchery, which is right by the gates to the castle.
The room is easily as pretty a restaurant room as I have seen, but we do not have pictures, sadly. The space seems literally to have been just that - a space between two buildings that was turned into a building of its own, using the rough, exterior walls of the flanking buildings as interior walls for the restaurant. We were seated in the portion called the Secret Garden, which had elaborate frescoes on the ceiling, and Celtic knotwork painted on the beams. The tables were covered first with brown velveteen, then crisp white linen, and each table had one low candle and one high candle, giving a very romantic appearance to the room even at mid day.

We started with the Light Lunch fixed menu, each choosing the Cream of Cauliflower soup, which was velvety and flavourful, without being overly heavy, and then moving on to the blanquette de veau main portion. I couldn't resist, actually. I have such fond memories of blanquette de veau from my time in Paris, that I leapt at the chance to have it at a nice restaurant again. Here, we were let down, however. The veal was a touch murky-looking, as though it had not been blanched properly, and Palle had some pieces that were cottony in texture - a sign of long boiling, usually. The creamy sauce was thin and slightly sour, as though injudicious use of lemon juice or perhaps white wine had marred its ability to achieve its proper texture (lightly coating the back of a spoon). They had garnished it - the purist in my shudders, but the cook in me does understand - with finely chopped chives, which is definitely against the point of blanquette de veau, which should be a stunningly, uncompromisingly white dish. I would have forgiven them this, if the sauce had been better. The dish should be succulent, and this, well, it just wasn't.

We attempted to drown our disappointment in the very good Burgundy wines that we ordered, one white, one red, at prices that should have fetched us a small, working estate somewhere. The wine was delicious, but neither it, nor the charming sampler of miniature desserts, managed to console me. I left disappointed, and with a cramped visa-signing hand.

On the up side, in Edinburgh we sampled some delightful Alsatian cuisine at Daniel's Bistro in Leith, including a delicious Tarte Flambe (Flammekueche) and for me - cassoulet, because apparently I was not entirely sick of beans, and for Palle, confit of duck, which he finds impossible to resist. Our dessert there was a dense, rich chocolate terrine drizzled with orange sauce, and the best coffee to be found in Scotland.

We also went to a modern, upscale Italian eatery in Edinburgh, named Centotre. We had a devastatingly good bruschetta there - raw milk buffalo mozzarella, chile-infused olive oil, arugula, and anchovies, but sadly chose main courses that were heavier than we really wanted. We should have sampled some of the other bruschetta offerings, and simply made a meal of that. The wines were affordable and delicious, and we left without feeling like we'd had our pockets ransacked.

Our last night in Scotland, we joined a fellow Canadian and some of his Scottish friends (he used to live in Glasgow) for dinner and then later, drinks. Dinner was at Stravaigin 2, about as true a bistro as you'll find in Glasgow. Some lovely wine, some lovely food, and then we were off to Cottiers - a bar (and restaurant, although we weren't in that portion) in a converted church in the west end. The evening was an absolute delight - a true pub night with wonderfully friendly and welcoming people, charming venues, and a good deal to eat and drink. Fortified thusly, we bravely made our way back to the Charing Cross for our final night, our final breakfast, and finally, onto the plane for the long flight home.

I am still recovering from jet lag, climate change, and a meat-hangover. I shall eat little other than fresh vegetables for the next week.

Wee Update

I am writing from Glasgow, where WorldCon has thoughtfully provided fee (although very limited, understandably) internet access to its members.

After a few days of fried things, we have discovered the elusive nouvelle Scottish cuisine at something less than the astonishingly high prices of the places that are heavily advertised. A tiny restaurant called The Piper's Tryst, just on the north edge of city centre, has a short but carefully considered menu of traditional Scottish foods created and presented in a thoroughly modern way. The wild game terrine, which I started my meal with, was particularly lovely: it was very clean tasting, although completely meaty, and the garnish of red onion relish went beautifully with it. My main course was roasted lamb served on a bed of barley risotto, and was as sophisticated in flavours as fine dining gets - a subtle chiffonade of mint instead of the ubiquitous green minty sauce, a discreet use of wine in the sauce, and a beautiful pinkness to the juices of the meat, which was none-the-less cooked through.

Alas, we had no room for dessert - I am embarrassed to report that I could not even quite finish my barley. But, if any place we've visited so far merits a second go, this is the one. Perhaps when we return from the Edinburgh leg of our trip, before flying home on the 12th.

I'm pleased to report that I have again tried haggis in whiskey sauce, and this time managed a much better sample than I got ten years ago in Edinburgh. It's not a dish I'm likely to put on a weekly or even monthly menu at home, but it was pleasant to discover that it needn't be unbearably bouncy in texture.

More to come when I return.

Chili, Biscuits, & Technology

Mostly, I tend toward cold, light, and refreshing meals at this time of year. Sometimes, however, the need to cook from the pantry, or the sort of odd light-headedness I get from eating sporadic non-meals for too long a stretch, makes me want something hearty. Chili fits the bill, because it is definitely hearty, but also employs the flavours of Mexico which eases the fact that it is not really summer food in most respects.

I've been on something of a mission to clear out my fridge before we head away to Scotland this coming week, and thus I have sometimes found myself with interesting challenges on my hands. Having used the last of my tortillas, and not really wanting to get or make more that will then languish in my absence, and being quite low on bread, I decided to make biscuits to go with my chili. Usually, we can demolish a pan of biscuits in pretty much record time, and if there were any leftover, I could always freeze them. Besides, biscuits are a classic sort of Texan dish, and quite appropriate for chili. Especially, if they are cheese biscuits.

For the chili, I was simply using up ground beef that was in the freezer, and a miscellany of beans and tomatoes in the pantry. The various seasonings are things that I always have on hand, and so I made what for me is a fairly standard bowl of mixed bean chili.


I should say here, that I am a huge fan of "proper" Texas chili, the quintessential "bowl o' red" as well as more faithfully Mexican dishes, such as Posole (which to me has always seemed to be a sort of chili), but I also enjoy my mother's style of chile, which as you can see, uses ground beef, kidney beans (I also added black beans, since they were handy), tomatoes, and peppers. It is a fine, comforting dish, and it makes a fine conversion to Chili Macaroni, Chili Dogs, or even Chili Omelettes, if that's what floats your boat.

The biscuits are my oh-so-simple biscuit recipe, gussied up with a little cheddar cheese and some freshly snipped sage from the window sill. For the first time, I actually used the food processor to mix the dough - filled with trepidation that the dough would yield tough little bullets instead of my predictably airy little scones. I need not have worried, as it turned out. The processor did an excellent job of integrating the cheese, and the biscuits rose up as tall as I could have wished.


They were as good a match for the chili as I had hoped, too. The flavours of sage and cheddar complemented the chipotle-tinged chili, and the whole meal (rounded out with cole slaw) turned out rather well.

I'm cautiously pleased with the food-processor adventure, and will probably employ it again. I am often torn between my absolute pleasure at doing things the old fashioned way, and the speed and convenience that comes with using newer kitchen technology. The only reason I might not use the processor, really, is that it is marginally more effort to clean than a bowl and wooden spoon. Since I can throw the processor bowl and lid into the dishwasher, that probably shouldn't be much of a deterrent.

The chili is gone, having been reincarnated (heh) as chili dogs a couple of nights later, and the few biscuits that made it through the night were eagerly devoured the next day.

The fridge is almost bare. We leave for Glasgow in two days.

Oven-Baked Chicken Fingers

Fortnightly update!

The main Always in the Kitchen website has a new recipe:

Oven-Baked Chicken Fingers - two variations!

and a new essay: Authenticity

"...Mentioning that you like beans in your chili might get you shot in parts of Texas – or at least win you a severe tongue-lashing. While the beans/no beans debate is familiar to us northerners, the great tomato/no tomato debate rages just as fiercely. "

Enjoy!

Summer Patio Wines

I should preface this write up with the caveat that I was not in the best of moods going into the tasting, uncomfortable due to the heat and an unfortunate overindulgence in potato chips that left me feeling rather grotesque.

Note to self: enough with the potato chips, already.
Note to busybody Superego: La la la la la-la! (fingers in ears).

Ahem.

The Summer Patio Wine tasting has become an annual event. Every July, we stagger into the restaurant out of the oppressively humid heat, and set about drinking wines that fall into the category of refreshing, inexpensive (usually), and "quaffable."

We started with a sparkling Veuve du Vernay Blanc de Blanc Brut from France, an impressively inexpensive $13. There was a crisp dry scent of apples that reminded me of a good sparkling cider, and sure enough, that was reflected on the palate, too. This definitely hit all the critera, being refreshing, cheap, and at only 11% alcohol, pretty quaffable.

The next two wines were from a small, new winery in the Okanagan, Joie, in Penticton. We had their Unoaked Chardonnay 2004, and their "Noble Blend" 2004. It should be noted that the "noble" comes from the last name of one of the winemakers, and is not related to botrytis affected grapes. Both clocked in at $18, which is actually a little on the high side for the Patio category, but not completely out of the ballpark. The Chardonnay was devastatingly true to typicity: soft, slightly grassy, but most of all - buttery and oily. Thank goodness, for my sake, it was unoaked, because I do not care for oak in my white wines. Given how big and true to form this Chardonnay was, I suspect that if it were oaked it would have that awful acrid wood taste that I associate with Chardonnay's from California (especially in the early 90s). The Noble Blend was a blend of Gewurtztraminer, Kerner, and Muscat, and smelled tropically sweet. Everyone at the table agreed on apricots, and I got a strong hit of guava, too. The palate was thick, sweet, and overwhelmingly apricot. I could have made cake with it, but it wasn't nearly refreshing enough for a hot summer patio. A bit cloying, really. I will be interested to see what this winery does in the future.

From there, we re-visited an old favourite - Cloudy Bay's 2004 Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough in New Zealand. Cloudy Bay is one of the more famous of the New Zealand wineries, Oyster Bay hot on its heals. Along with the fame has come a corresponding jump in prices, so our little Sauv. blanc came in at $35 - a bit ouchy for patio sipping. Its good acids cut nicely through the stickiness of the weather, and its aromas of grass, foliage and dusty road were right on target. The palate was cool and crisp and mild, with a touch of raw green vegetable that wasn't unappealing. It wasn't as good as I remember it being, but it was quite enjoyable. It may have suffered in the line-up placement behind something as sticky-sweet as the Joie Noble Blend.

Our fifth wine was the universally reviled Famiglia Bianchi 2002 Cabernet Sauvignon from Argentina. In my experience, Argentina does not do wine well. I've had a handful of drinkable Malbecs, and the rest, in my opinion, has been dreck. This was no exception: Smelling predominantly of oily rubber, the combined flavours of wood, grease, pitch earned a "nastiness" notation on my tasting sheet. (((shudder))) That was not worth the $20. Don't pour for me, Argentina.

Moving on rather rapidly, we hit the Quail's Gate Old Vines Foch from 2002. Another BC winery, and one that's produced a number of very respectable wines, this particular wine is of limited availability and has something of an almost cult-following. The nose was quite closed, but the flavours were juicy and dark. At $19 per bottle it's not bad value, but I wasn't blown away by it, either. Still, this was one that I finished the glass on, so perhaps that speaks for itself.

The final wine was a 2003 Paradise Ranch Late Harvest Merlot, also from BC. Like most late harvest wines, it was sweet - but not as cloying to me as the Joie Noble Blend. The colour was a light, pinkish red, and the nose and palate both reflected honey very strongly. I got a taste of raspberry, but other than that the fruit seemed to come under the category of miscellaneous. Perhaps some berry? By this point in the tasting, I was fairly distracted and quite irritable, so I may not have done it justice, but I didn't enjoy this one as much as some of the other tasters. It was $30.

There wasn't a really clear winner, and we actually failed to take our usual poll at the end of the tasting (I guess I wasn't the only one that was distracted and tired). I would say that in pure Patio requirements, the Veuve Vernay reigned, but I also enjoyed the Cloudy Bay and the Old Vines Foch. Our next tasting will focus primarily on BC small lots. I intend to refrain from the potato chips before that one.

Previous Tastings:
Portugese Table Wines
Pinot Noir
South African Red Wines
Spanish Wines

Road Rage and Buffalo Wing Pizza

I don't believe in road rage. I resent the terminology, in fact, because I think that it leads to people shrugging off inexcusable behaviour and poor self-control with a "what are you going to do?" shrug based on a faux-scientific term.

Today, on my lovely walk home across the bridge, I was startled off my stride by crazed yelling two lanes over from the sidewalk. A couple of guys had jumped out of their convertible and were screaming at the driver of another car to get out of his car, and punctuating their yells with full-shoulder punches to the roof of the car in question - whose driver was huddled over the steering wheel in a flinching posture. I suspect, based on the slight angle of the car being assaulted, that the issue may have been as simple as the convertible being cut off by the other car. The punches looked comic-book, as though they could punch through the roof to reach their target, who quite sensibly stayed put. I'm glad they weren't punching the windows.

I don't know what happened to create this situation, but I'm fairly sure that there wasn't any contact between the two cars. I was that close that I would have heard it. Traffic had stopped, snarled helplessly , while these two adult men tried to wrench open the door of the car. I screamed at them. No one else seemed to be doing anything, so I screamed. "Stop that right now!" This flew out of my mouth before I could even gauge how unwise it might be to yell at angry, aggresive men only a few feet away. "Get back in your car!" I yelled. "Get off of the bridge! Do it now! Stop that right now!" I remember the exact litany, because I repeated it twice until they retreated to their convertible and traffic started to move again. By this time, there was another woman standing beside me, also yelling "Stop it!" and she had the presence of mind to note down the license plate. I asked if she had a cell phone. She said that she was almost home and was going to report the incident, and I gave her my card in case they needed another witness.

When I got home, she had already left me a message to let me know that a number of other people had already phoned in the information from their cell phones, and that the police were dispatched to locate the car. I was relieved to know that I wasn't as alone out there as I had suddenly felt, yelling at a couple of thugs.

I got home, adrenalin still rushing through my veins, my head sort of swimming.

I shook the last of my indignation at society away and started to make dinner. I still had some lovely Tiger Blue cheese from Poplar Grove in the fridge, and my spidey-sense was telling me that it should be used, and pronto. Buffalo wing pizza seemed the easy answer of the day.

I make this pizza a little different, every time I make it. Basically, all you need is a crust (expired link removed, please see comments below for recipe), a little blue cheese dressing, some chicken breast that has been sauteed in a little hot sauce - classic style, please, this is not really the place for funky pineapple or even a nice smokey chipotle - and a good scattering of small chunks of blue cheese. Sometimes, I add a little mozzarella, just to make it pretty.

Today, I was running low on all-purpose flour, so I use half whole-wheat, giving me the pretext of it being healthy food. This is, however, without a doubt the least healthy pizza in my repertoire. No vegetables (have some celery sticks on the side to play up the "wing" factor) and a rich, rich sauce. For some reason, whole wheat never really browns nicely in my oven, unless I use an egg wash - which I was far too lazy to do here. So, if the crust looks a little pale, it is. It's also cooked through, however, and has a little colour in spots. It is delicious.

In fact, all of my buffalo wing pizza variations have been tasty. It's a killer combination of ingredients, really. Tangy, creamy, and satisfying. I like Trappey's Red Devil sauce, which you can't buy in this town (along with grits and California wine, Red Devil is my principal import from Bellingham), but any hot sauce that's good for wings will do. Frank's would probably be fine, if that's what you like. I've never tried it, but I hear it's good.

I'm feeling calmer, now. I've had a couple of slices, and a beer, and I'm no longer convinced that society is falling to shreds before my very eyes. Yet.

Orzo is My New Best Friend

Orzo is my new best friend. Good thing, too, because suddenly it is everywhere – on every menu, at every picnic or buffet or wedding reception. I book a lot of food for events through work, so when I tell you that orzo is everywhere, I’m not kidding around.

For some time now, since before orzo’s sudden explosion in popularity, I’ve been meaning to try a particular recipe from the Cooking Light Collection #6. It is innocuously named “Creamy Parmesan Orzo” or "Orzo with Parmesan and Basil" or somesuch, in the side dish section of the recipe break-down.

The recipe is easy to make, fast, and shockingly good. The formula runs something like this:

1 cup orzo, uncooked
1 tablespoon butter
2.5 cups liquid (half chicken stock, half water in the original)
¼ cup grated parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons fresh basil leaves, minced, torn or chiffonade
pinch salt
fresh ground black pepper

Melt the butter over medium heat in a medium sized saucepan. Add the raw orzo, and stir around for a couple of minutes to get it well coated. Add the liquid, bring to the boil, reduce the heat and allow to simmer for about 10 – 15 minutes (depending on what “medium” is on your stovetop), stirring frequently. When the liquid is mostly absorbed, and the orzo starts to “catch” on the bottom of the pot, turn the heat off and add the parmesan, basil, salt and pepper.

Serves 4 as a side dish. Or, two greedy people who like starch. *ahem*

The original recipe also included toasted pine nuts, which I omitted simply because I didn’t have them, but I also think that the dish did not suffer for their absence. Not only were we exclaiming over the deliciousness of the dish constantly throughout dinner (sorry, apricot chicken, tasty as you were, you paled in comparison to the orzo), we were also dreaming up ways to vary the dish quite endlessly. These were some of the speculated changes:

• Broccoli florets (small) added five minutes to the end of cooking
• 1 cup of sliced fresh spinach, exchange parmesan for blue cheese, and toasted walnuts
• Sundried tomatoes and kalamata olives with basil and parsley
• Medley of finely diced peppers and feta
• Exchange the water for milk for an extra creamy dish and add sauteed mushrooms

This is the dish that those packaged “Lipton Sidekicks” aspire to be, but fall short in sodium-frenzied starchy mediocrity.

Gyoza factory

I have been told that in some Asian families, children often participate in making dumplings - quickly learning the skills required to nimbly fold soft sheets of dough around a variety of succulent fillings - and the entire family sits around a table making dozens of dumplings at a time. Some for now, some for the freezer. It's a mental image that I love: it reminds me of making perogies with my mother, although we never made them in such a quantity (or all that often).

For the most part, I am a factory of one. Still, after the first couple of clumsily folded dumplings, I usually get into a groove and manage to fold three dozen neatly folded dumplings in less than an hour all by myself. Today, I decided to fold both halves of my package of gyoza skins - a total of six dozen dumplings. Since mixing up the filling takes the same amount of time, whether you are doing one or six dozen, it doesn't really add much time to the task to do a whole lot at once.


Since my last batch of gyoza were chicken, ginger, and water chestnut, I decided to go back to my standard pork recipe for this batch. Who knows what the next batch will be - I'm thinking I might try something with shrimp. So now, once again my freezer is stuffed with little treasures. I have my Jamaican Jerk Patties, I have some burritos (although they are running low) and I have six dozen gyoza, just waiting for a noodle-feast! I am pleased with my afternoon's work. Less than a couple of hours, really.

Lentil Salad - Two Ways

Link Update! You can find the below-mentioned recipes in the comments of this post.

Fortnightly update!

The main Always in the Kitchen website has a new recipe:

Lentil Salad - Two Ways - featuring both a Turkish Lentil Salad and Ethiopian Azifa

and a new essay: A World of Salad

"...Even more certainly, I declared to myself that I would never, ever order salad on a date. Certainly, any salad scrumptious enough to make me change my mind ought to be sinful enough to qualify for exemption from the rule."

Enjoy!

Odd and Ends, or Primavera di Estate

Sometimes, what you have on hand is enough. In this case, quickly grilling some languishing zucchini and peppers while the farfalle pasta boiled up, and tossing with fresh herbs, a diced tomato, garlic and olives. And, just like that, dinner is ready.


I love it when thing work so simply, and so well.

Little Jerks

I can seldom resist the temptation to tamper with a recipe, even when it's one as delicious -sounding as Templar's Jamaican Beef Patties. In my defence, the only thing that persuaded me to vary the recipe was the knowledge that, lurking in the depths of my freezer, were some little containers of Palle's wonderful homemade jerk sauce, carefully saved from the last Caribbean dinner we had. How could I resist? Much of the seasoning in the recipe immediately fell aside as I gleefully poured about a cup of reserved jerk sauce into the beef and onion mixture. I did add a fresh jalapeno, as well - so between the habaneros in the jerk and the whole (seeds and all) jalapeno that I blitzed with the bread crumbs, there's a certain spicy quality about them that would probably seriously harm some of my more heat-wary friends.

I made a half-batch, as I only had one pound of ground beef at hand, so I also halved the dough recipe, whirring it up in my food processor in almost no time. I did use a little less water than called for - I always like to go a bit scant on the liquid, to prevent toughness. I've never used the processor to make pastry before, and I was quite impressed with the results. Tender, even a little flaky. Viva la "pulse" function!

I divided the dough into twelve pieces, and rolled each out out to roughly hand-sized, as directed. The dough is full of curry powder, giving it a lovely flecked appearance and a yellow hue from the turmeric (the latest and greatest cancer-fighting food, you know). It does take a bit of time to roll out a dozen pastries - thirteen, all told, when I re-rolled the cut scraps into an extra, slightly large patty. I was glad that the dough took so little effort to make, since the rolling took longer than I had thought. Each patty is about the size of a samosa, excluding the last one, which is more along the size of the ones you can buy from shops in this neck of the woods. I had a little filling left over, since I didn't want to risk exploding pastries, and that has been tucked into the fridge to be made into a feisty pasta sauce later in the week.

The proof is in the tasting, of course, at the end of it. Happily, they were delicious! I will have to make them again, of course, using the proper seasonings - just to see how they turn out. But I was happy to have a couple for dinner, and I plan to freeze any that don't get wolfed down in the next day or two. I've just added a new entry into my collection of freezer treasures - little homemade gems that are an absolute delight to pull out when one is short on time and in need of a quick, tasty supper.

A Day in Pictures

I didn't really set out to spend all day in the kitchen, but brief shopping excursions aside, that's pretty much what happened.

Breakfast was a quickly cooked and even more quickly eaten breakfast quesadilla, full of scrambled eggs, chile pepper rings, cheese, and Bufalo Chipotle hot sauce.


This fortified me long enough to get some much needed shopping out of the way in the morning, before coming back to the kitchen.

The first thing I set about making was a Turkish Lentil Salad, which I had promised earlier would be in the works for this afternoon. It takes less than an hour, and is pretty relaxing work.

The flavours of lemon juice and white wine vinegar sink into the warm lentils and take with them a payload of salt, cayenne, and most of all cumin. It's delicious while it's still hot, but it's even better when it has a chance to sit in the fridge for a while, to let the flavours meld.

I must have gotten a little faster at the vegetable chopping, since I had time to knock together a white bean hummus, flecked with parsley. I used the recipe Molly posted on Orangette as a departure point, but substituted cayenne for cumin. It's not hot, but it has a little zing to it.

Moving on, my only other real task of the day was to make Challah, which I wanted to do because a) we were perilously low on bread, and b) I wanted to make some as a thank you for someone who did something very nice for Palle and I last week.

I went with the traditional braid, as I often do. This is the bread that I often bring as a gift to housewarming parties, so if you think it looks familiar, it should. This is the "single decker" as opposed to the "double decker" that I sometimes do when there's a lot of people to feed.


I love the little extra bit of rising that occurs in the oven - oven spring - which creates lovely, decorative little tears between the braided strands, and shows of a wonderful contrast between the shiny burnished brown of the egg-washed curves of the braid and the pale, non-reflective, almost white interior of the loaf.

With my last task out of the way, and the bread lying on a rack in the bedroom, which is the coolest room in the house and is the only place safe from cat-predation of baked goods, I decided to have a whack at a raspberry almond torte. I monkeyed around with the ingredients to reduce the amount of oil called for, and studded the batter with fresh, juicy raspberries.

The almond appears as ground almonds, which I buy pre-ground (but very fresh) from Parthenon on West Broadway. It is essential to use fresh ground almonds, because I once made this cake with somewhat stale ground almonds left from Christmas amaretti, and the cake was barely tolerable and had an aftertaste. Not this one, though.

Fresh as a daisy. Er, fresher, actually, as daisies have always seemed a little rank. The reduced oil actually seemed to lighten the torte, making it airier and giving it a real spring in its slice. I plated the torte upside down and dusted it with confectioners' sugar for a simple, rustic dessert or snack. The raspberries did sink down to the bottom of the batter, though, so next time I may have to add them to the top of the unbaked torte, and perhaps they then will only sink half-way. Still, it should suffice for lunches for the coming week - if it lasts that long.

And now my day is drawing to a close. I still need to bag up the challah and put away a few dishes, and then it's quittin' time.

Good night.

Double Ginger Chicken Stir Fry

There is an art to the stir fry, and it's one that has taken me a long time to learn. Most of the principles seemed pretty simple - cut things small, cook quickly over high heat, use contrasting textures of vegetables for maximum effect.

Somehow, though, my stir fries were never quite what I wanted them to be, until one night that Palle made dinner for me. It was the onions. They were cooked, but still crisp - a textural issue which had eluded me for some time. His secret? Add the onions at the end.What? Onions go in at the beginning. Almost every dish I make seems to involve chopping up an onion first. It felt wrong to add it last. I cringed, looking at the neat pile of chopped onions on my cutting board when I first put the theory into practice. I probably made a face. But, at the end of it, I added the onions last, and they had the texture I had been looking for. A whole world of stir fry opportunities opened up for me.

There are a few secrets to stir fries, and most of them involve the word "not." Not to add too much thickener to the sauce, not to cook too long so that the tender vegetables go limp, not to add too many different seasonings that will make the finished dish taste like all of the leftovers at a Chinese restaurant were smooshed into the same takeout container. There are a few positive rules, too: always make sure your pan is very hot before you begin, or you won't properly sear the meat or infuse the aromatics into the hot oil.

Double ginger chicken stir fry came about because I love fresh ginger. I also like the background heat of dried ginger, and combining the two as the dominant characteristics on a background of chicken just sounded like a really good idea. I added mushrooms, because I like them, and because they also play well with ginger. I added bell peppers, because they are a sought-after stir fry item in this household, and I added celery because I had some on hand.

The stir fry is a college mainstay for good reason. You don't need a lot of meat (but you can use it if you've got it), it has loads of flavour, and uses vegetables that are usually pretty affordable, particularly in the summer. It's a cheap topping for inexpensive rice or noodles. You can substitute ingredients according to whim, availability, and budget. You can pick a flavour and go deep - spicy, or gingery, or garlicy, or black-bean, or hoisin, or oyster sauce, or... or... it's really up to the cook.

Too much tzatziki

I have no sense of proportion when it comes to making sauces, so perhaps it should be no surprise that I have way too much tzatziki sauce left after my lamburger dinner on Sunday. The solution? Souvlaki! A little lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, oregano, salt and pepper, a little time goes by, and boom! Onto the grill.

Shortly after that, it's into a split pita with an enormous spoonful of greek salad and the aforementioned tzatziki sauce, and dinner was ready.

My day was not quite as simple as that sounds, however, because I had lessons in camera maintenance to learn. Namely, that if you leave the camera turned on while plugged into your computer for 24 hours, the fresh batteries die. So, with my souvlaki marinating away, I ran out to the corner store, cursing under my breath at the shoe that would not stay on my foot, skitter into the shop to get stuck behind some slow-talking customer who couldn't make up his mind what kind of phone card he wanted to purchase, bought the batteries with the last of my change, and skittered back home.

I still have a little tzatziki left - just enough to take care of the leftovers.

Mmmmm. Souvlaki.

If you don’t know me by now…

I’ll have to supply more details!

Linda has tagged me for The Cook Next Door meme.

What is your first memory of baking/cooking on your own?
I was seven years old, making oatmeal cookies that I had “assisted” with many times before. I panicked and added only 1/8 of a cup of flour instead of 1 cup plus 1/8 of a cup. The cookie dough was very liquidy, but I pressed on anyway, and the entire pan of cookies flowed into a solid, caramel coloured mass. We pried it off the sheet and cut it into squares, called it candy and ate it anyway. It was tasty, and my family was very reassuring that it wasn’t a dead loss, but I was quite embarrassed. It didn’t stop me from tackling independent cookery again, but from here on I was more disposed to ask advice if something didn’t look quite right.

Who had the most influence on your cooking?
Without question, my mother, who was not only an excellent cook, but had an almost magical ability to make great dinners out of almost nothing at all. There are some other significant influences, though, including the Dutch neighbour we had when I was growing up. She introduced the family to Tai-Tai gingerbread, olieballen, krokets, and all manner of fascinating food. She had been a professional cook for most of her life, and had stories to tell from working at exclusive clubs to being the cook for a logging camp. I was impressed at how much enjoyment she took telling stories about various culinary flops ("The next perogie filled the entire plate!") and her blithe manner of handling things not working out as they should.

Do you have an old photo as “evidence” of an early exposure to the culinary world and would you like to share it?
Nope. There are very few photos (other than school pics) of me as a child, and it would never have occurred to us to photograph something going on in the kitchen.

Mageiricophobia - do you suffer from any cooking phobia, a dish that makes your palms sweat?
I suffer from Fear of Frying. Specifically, deep fat frying. I’ve done it, but it makes me nervous, and I tend to avoid it.

What would be your most valued or used kitchen gadgets and/or what was the biggest letdown?
Best: My mother’s cast iron frying pan, and my Goldhampster 8” chef knife
Worst: None, really. I have a zester that's not as useful as I'd hoped.

Name some funny or weird food combinations/dishes you really like - and probably no one else!
Peanut butter on pancakes
Fruit yogurt on pancakes
For the record, I don’t think these are weird at all, but this is what I am told…

What are the three eatables or dishes you simply don’t want to live without?
Bread
Garlic
Cheese

Any question you missed in this meme, that you would have loved to answer? Well then, feel free to add one!

Three quickies:Your favorite ice-cream…
Dark chocolate

You will probably never eat…
The still beating heart of a cobra.

Your own signature dish…
That’s a toughie… I love inventing dishes, and am immediately smitten with anything that turns out well. Perhaps my Bengali Red Lentils, or braised lamb shanks. I make a mean sour cherry soup, too…

I think everyone that I know in cyberland has already been tagged, but if you’re reading this and want to participate, go for it (and send me the link)!