Eat at Joe's

Beer! Part 4 - Bottling

2012-02-07T16:02:00.000-08:00

See how the other parts of this saga happened in January, but this one comes in February? It pretty much defines my relationship with bottling: I despise the process. The main pain is the fact that you have to sterilise and rinse a seemingly infintie quantity of bottles. It's not so bad if you have helpers and can set up an assembly line, but if you're doing it solo, be prepared for an hour or so of tedium (tunes help a lot, by the way). The alternative, and believe me, I have been tempted, is to just guzzle the whole batch straight out of the carboy. It won't have fizz, but it will still be awesome!

Ok. Assuming you have conquered your Viking leanings, let's get this batch in bottles. The idea behind bottling is two fold. First, you want to seal the brew away so that it can be stored and aged without any exposure to air. Second, most people like a little fizz in their beer, and this is your chance to add carbonation to the brew. To carbonate, we add a little extra sugar to the batch just before bottling. This gives the yeast something new to work on, but since there is a cap on the bottle, the CO2 they produce can't escape. Voila! Fizz! The key is to add just the right amount of sugar, hence the whole specific gravity thing. (More on that in a second.)

Most people (I think -- I don't know really, since I'm pretty Lone Wolf on this whole brewing thing, but from what I've read and from the weird looks I get at the brew supply shop when I mention my fly-by-night process) decide to bottle by measuring the specific gravity of their brew over a period of several days. If the specific gravity doesn't change it means that fermentation has stopped. This is a good thing to be sure of, since if you have a bunch of un-fermented sugar in your beer and bottle it, you can pretty much be certain that the fermentation will continue after bottling, the pressure will build up to extremes, and your nice bottles of beer will start exploding all over the place. Me, I let the brew sit around for a couple of weeks, I keep an eye on the air-lock, and decide to bottle when a) I finally work up the gumption to deal with this arduous process, and b) it looks like fermentation is done because the air-lock hasn't done anything in a few days. (I can't recommend that YOU do this, since I don't want your bottles to explode, I'm just explaining what I do at the FBNB -- Fly By Night Brewery.)

ANYWAY, let's get on with it. On the equipment front, you'll need a bucket, your fermented brew, a bottle capper, caps, enough bottles to hold your batch (glass bottles please, plastic sucks), your siphon hoses, and a small sauce pan. My capper adjusts automatically to the height of my bottles, and I highly recommend you get one like that if you plan to have a higgledy-piggledy collection of differently sized bottles like me.

To begin, we need to get all those bottles sterilised. I mix up a 5 gallon batch of Diversol in an empty primary fermenter. (By the way, it's good to have a couple of these puppies in stock so you can brew and bottle without ever having to say "Oh man! My primary has a batch of beer in it!! How can I bottle now?!")

Then I inspect my bottles. When I pour a beer, I usually rinse the bottle striaght-away to avoid it getting all mouldy inside. Occasionally, however, I sometimes forget, as is evident from the bottom of this poor bottle. I don't like gobs of mould floating around in my steriliser, so I just recycle any bottle that looks like this and go for a clean one instead. You should too.

Plunk your mould-free bottles into the fermenter full of sterliser, let the air bubble out, and let them sit for a few minutes (again, I have no idea how long, I just wing it).

After this unspecified period of time, drain the bottles (back into the fermenter) and put them in your sink.

Get a new batch of bottles on the go right away.

Now, I like to rinse the outside of ALL my bottles before I rinse the insides. (You have to add that brass thingy from the previous post to the tap to rinse the insides, so I prefer to do that all at once.) So, give the bottles a quick rinse on the outside and set them aside while you sterilise all the other batches of bottles.

Speaking of the brass thingy, there are a couple of other pieces of equipment you want to get sterile at the same time. One is the brass thingy (no duh!) that you use to rinse the bottles, another is a bottling wand (a little tube with a plunger in the bottom that is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL unless you like big messes), and all your bottle caps.

I usually just chuck all this stuff in the fermenter of Diversol while I attend to the insides of the bottles. (Note I have the siphon hoses stuck in there in this photo too -- I'll flip the carboy cane over somewhere around the half-way point.)

Ok, once all the bottles are ready on the outside, fish your little brass thingy out of the steriliser, rinse it, and attach it to your tap.

Then crank the hot water on, and rinse the insides of all your bottles. I ususally do around 4 blasts, each lasting 4-5 seconds. I let the bottle drain between each rinse. I have no idea if this is excessive or what, but I don't want any weird sterilisers in my beer, so I rinse with reckless abandon!

Once all your bottles are done, it's time to get the priming sugar ready. This is the sugar the yeast will use to carbonate your brew. I use powdered malt for this process. I like my beers to be 100% malt (with some honey in there now and then), and so I refuse to use the corn sugar (dextrose) that some people use at bottling time. I'm sure it works, but it seems like cutting corners to me, and this seems extra crazy to do at the very last step. In terms of quantiy, a 4 gallon batch needs 1 cup of powdered malt (if you're doing a 3 gallon batch use 3/4 cup, and for 5 gallons use 1 1/4 cups -- easy!). I won't tell you how much corn sugar you need in an effort to deliver you from temptation.

The trick here is that your beer is (hopefully) all happy and free of bacteria and rogue yeasts, and you want to keep it that way. To do so, you need to boil the sugar in 2 cups of water to make sure it is sterile too. So do that. Just watch out for boil-overs here too -- it is even more likely in the small pan, so be careful. After 5 to 10 minutes of boiling, your priming sugar should be nice and safe.

Pop the lid on your pot and let it cool while you head down to the basement for round two.

Ok -- still some work to be done down here. You have a load of caps that need to be rinsed (if you put them in the bucket a while ago like I suggested). I keep them in a two-cup measuring cup in the steriliser, and keep them in that cup while I rinse them too. It's a handy way to avoid total chaos, and gives you some where to put them until you need them.

I also rinse out the bottling wand and put it in the measuring cup, and if I'm racking a batch at the same time as I am bottling, I put the air-lock and bung for the carboy in there too. Multi-tasking rocks! Once all the stuff is out of the primary fermenter, rinse that too since you'll need it in the next step.

Now it's time for the mise-en-place (remember it's French for "get your shit together.") Here we have the bottles, the capper, the caps, the bottling wand, the carboy of brew, the clean primary fermenter, and a spare bucket all ready to go.

Step one is to get your priming sugar into the sterile fermenter bucket. We're going to transfer the brew from the carboy into this bucket to ensure that the sugar gets distributed evenly throughout the batch. (It's possible to put a little sugar into each bottle and go from there, but I hope you're not THAT crazy!)

Let the hot sugar cool a little while you get your siphon hoses all rinsed and charged with clean water (see here for some more-or-less guidance on that whole nightmare.)

When your hose is charged and ready to go, (remember the Kung-Fu grip!) pop the air-lock off of your carboy, get the carboy cane in there, and drain the charging water out into a bucket on the floor. Once the hose is running pure beer, pour yourself a quick sample -- it should reflect the final brew pretty well, minus the carbonation of course.

Drain the carboy...

into your bucket until you reach the gunky goo at the bottom of the carboy. At this point stop the flow with the little plastic clamp on the siphon hose. Now you have to get the bottling wand on there.

I raise the business end of the flexible siphon hose until it is more-or-less level with the liquid remaining in the carboy.

Then I wiggle the bottling wand on to the end of the flexible hose. I have no idea how anyone else pulls this off (cf. Lone Wolf, above) but this works for me.

Then, and this is important. I plunk the bottling wand down to the bottom of the primary brew bucket to force-out any air that's trapped in there. The wand has a little plunger that opens the flow when it touches the bottom of a bottle or a bucket, and that stops the flow as soon as you lift it from the bottom. So, just give the wand a tap on the bottom of the bucket, let the air out, then lift it and you have a charged bottling siphon hose ready to go!

Now for the switcheroo. The bucket on the floor is now the source, so you have to lift it up onto a table so the righteous brew can flow down into your bottles. Keep the bottling wand below the level of the carboy while you do this -- if you lift it higher than the carboy level, the back pressure will trip the plunger in the wand and you'll lose the beer that is charging the siphon hose. Not a disaster, but it sucks since you have to re-charge with water, re-attach the wand, etc....

Then you have to move the carboy cane over from the carboy into the bucket of primed brew. The trick here is to grab the little plunger at the end of the bottling wand BEFORE you lift the carboy cane out of the remaing liquid in the carboy -- this keeps the back pressure from opening the plunger because you're pinching it with all your might. Once the cane has switched buckets, you're good to go and can let go of the plunger. (This all sounds horribly complicated, but it is much easier in practice -- invite me over and I can help out in person: cost = several free beers [deal of the century!])

OK! Bottling time! Get a clean bottle, plunk the bottling wand in there, and fill it to the top. When you take the wand out it will leave the perfect amount of airspace in the bottle.

Get another bottle going,

and continue until you run out of brew! I like to bottle in 600ml bottles for most of the batch, but I also fill a few small ones for testing.

Then cap! Put a full bottle on your capper...

add a cap...

and lever it down.

Voila!

Continue until you run out of full bottles (hopefully this is before you run out of caps).

Isn't this a wonderful hobby?!

By the way, be sure you don't let any remaining brew go to waste. It is wonderful just as it is, and gives you a chance to get in touch with your inner Viking. It's tasty sweet!!

Label your caps so you know what's in there (because you WILL brew more!).

Label the box you'll keep it in, so you know what's in there too.

Then let the beer rest at room temperature for a week or so to give the yeast a chance to get its job done. Test a bottle now and then to be sure the carbonation has developed (if it hasn't, Charlie recommends all kinds of remedial measures, but -- knock on wood -- I have never needed them -- just keep waiting and relax!). Then you can move the batch to cold storage to let it age and develop or you can just start drinking it.

CHEERS!! This concludes the brewing saga! I hope this clarifies some of the tricky bits of the process. At its heart, brewing is a simple yet marvelous alchemy, and I hope the few tricks I've learned along the way will help you brew brilliant batches of your own! No matter what, be sure to keep it fun -- it's the best hobby ever!! (except for the bottling part.)

Beer! Part 3 - Racking

2012-01-22T14:32:00.000-08:00

There is some debate as to what we're up to with this stage of the process. After a week in your primary fermenter, most of the fermentation of your brew will be done (in fact, you can drink it all now if you like, which is pretty much what beer was all about back in Viking times). Being more sophisticated and calm, however, we want to let the brew develop its full potential, and that's really what this step is all about.

The basic idea is to get your brew out of the primary fermenter and into a nice clean container. This transfer will leave behind all the gunky goo and dormant yeast that occurred during the first phase of fermentation, and will allow your concotion to age gracefully for a few weeks without the danger of decomposing goo messing-up all of your nice flavours. Fermentation will continue for sure (which is why this is sometimes called secondary fermentation), but the real goal here is to get the flavours to mingle and get to know one another. (You know how lasagne and spaghetti sauce are always better the next day? This is the same principle. Let's call it the Lasagne Principle and have it done at that.) It also allows the remainder of the yeast and other particles to settle out, clarifying your beer in the process.

On the equipment front you'll need some flexible siphon hose, an inflexible tube that I'll call a carboy cane since it looks like a candy cane (stuck in the glass carboy in the photo), a carboy, an air lock and bung to seal your carboy when it's full, and a week-old batch of beer in a primary fermenter ready to go. The measuring cup is a good idea too, since it gives you somewhere to put your air lock until you're ready to use it.

Now, getting your brew from one container to another in a sanitary way is quite a trick. In the middle ages they skipped this whole step and just drank it now, so there's no advice to be had there. Nowadays, we have to use a siphon hose to do the transfer. Siphoning should be a whole branch of physics unto itself. Charlie devotes a whole appendix to the process. There are only two things you really need to know however: 1) liquid in a hose will always move from high to low no matter how many twists and turns there are on the way, and 2) no matter how much you know about it, physical reality will confound your knowledge and drive you crazy.

Ok, with that in mind, let's get started.

The first thing you need to do is sterilise a glass carboy. As you know, I'm a 3 gallon man, so here's my 3 gallon carboy with a gallon of water/Diversol ready to kill all the nasties in sight. As with the primary fermenter, I just swish this around now and then, wait for unspecified periods of time, and then rinse.

Key to the whole rinsing proceedure is this nifty piece of brass hardware. It's a little thingy (official term) that you screw on to your faucet (I had to look that up -- I thought it had a "w" but it's because of Charlie's Angels -- different Charlie -- and that poster -- may she rest in peace). If you have some kind of modern faucet in your basement, you're screwed and should change it as soon as possible.

Anyway, this thing lets you shoot water stright up into the air (or your bottle or carboy) when you push down the attached lever. It's brilliant, and it's indispensable! Once your carboy is sterile, rinse it with your brass doohickey several times to get all the chemicals out of there.

You also need to sterilise your air lock and bung. I sterilise a measuring cup at the same time, rinse it, then put the sterilised and rinsed air lock and bung in there so they are ready to go when I need them.

The air lock is a twisty tube with two water chambers in it. It keeps air from flowing into your carboy, but it allows CO2 to escape as the pressure builds up. It's brilliant! Just fill it so the water in the two chambers is at or below the "max" line, and you're all set.

Then, do your mise-en-place. Followers of this blog should have a good idea what mise-en-place is all about. It's a French term that essentially means "get all your shit together before you start anything." In this case it means getting your primary fermenter up on a table, having your sterile carboy ready on the floor nearby, having your air lock sterile and ready, having an extra bucket on hand, and having a wee glass available to sample your brew. This picture has some extraneous stuff associated with bottling (because I was doing a Grand Slam of brewing, racking, and bottling all in one day so I could post it here), but it gives you a general idea of how prepped you need to be -- don't freak-out, I'm sure you can overcome any oversight, however the more prepared you are the better, but in the end, remember "Relax...!"

Once your place is all mised, you have to sterilise and charge your siphon hose. I can't provide a whole lot of advice here, since it's basically a nightmare. My approach is to bottle one batch and rack another on the same day, which makes the whole sterilising-of-the-hose thing easier (see the next post). However, now and then I don't have a bottling operation on the go. On those days, my technique is to fill a big steel bowl with sterilising solution, soak the flexible end of the hose in the bowl while washing down the carboy cane on the outside. Once the outside of the hose and cane are clean, I rinse them.

Then, I charge the hose with water -- this invloves filling the hose with water. To do this, I make a couple of loops in the flexible end so I can hold it in one hand. Then I put the cane end over a bucket, and put the opening of the flexible end under a running tap. If you're lucky, water will start flowing through the tubes and into your bucket. If you're unlucky (50% of the time in my experience) you have a bubble somewhere and have to drain your tubes and try again. Anyway, once your tubes are charged, you are the King of Suction and can do anything you want! What you want to do now is put your thumb over the flexible end to seal the water charge in your tubes, then put the cane end of your carboy cane in the steriliser solution and the flexible end near your bucket on the floor. Then you take your thumb off the flexible end and your steriliser solution should flow through your tubes. Seal the flexible end once the tube is full of steriliser and just chill for a few minutes to make sure the inside of the tubes is sterile. Rinse the cane end that was in the steel bowl, then start running clean water through the tubes by putting the cane end over your bucket and the flexible end under the running faucet. See how long this takes to explain in words?! No wonder Charlie has a whole Appendix on it!! Anyway, after a few rinses your tubes should be clean. Charge them again with cold water and plug the flexible end with you thumb. Use Kung-Fu grip, because you don't want to have to re-charge. Trust me.

Head over to your mise-en-place place with your Kung-Fu grip and charged siphon tubes and get ready to rumble!

Open your primary fermenter. Eeew!

Put the cane end of your siphon in there ...

...(Kung-Fu grip still in tact).

Then get the flexible end over a bucket on the floor and let your thumb go! The water in the tubes should start pulling the beer down through it.

Once the water is out and you're running pure beer, plug the end with your thumb again, head over to your little glass, and pour out a wee sample of your batch!

Then stop the flow with your thumb again, move the flexible end into your carboy, and let 'er rip! Keep the end close to the bottom of the carboy to avoid too much splashing.

It's a good idea to tilt the primary fermenter a little so you get as much brew as possible into your carboy.

Once your brilliant elixer is moved over, stop the flow in the tubes (that little white clamp helps at this point). Remove the siphon from the carboy, and add your air lock. You should see an instant reaction in the air lock -- the yeast is still active and will start pushing air through the twisty curves right away.

This can now bubble away for a few weeks or months. It's good to keep the carboy out of the light, so I plunk it into the box it came in. I usually decide to bottle once it is clear that nothing is going through the air lock anymore. SOME people use a hygrometer to make this decision, but that's not my speed. I just wait and wing it.

Anyway, you did it! Rinse your primary fermenter and hoses to get all the gunk out of them, and treat yourself to a beer! You totally earned it!!

Next step: bottling!

BEER! Part 2 - The Wort

2012-01-22T11:02:00.000-08:00

Wort is the sugary tea that gets fermented into beer, and cooking-up a batch is the first step in the brewing process.

Before you do anything, however, open a beer (ideally a homebrew -- yes, I made that!). This is a crucial first step. Beer can sense fear, and will go all wonky if you stress it out, so relax, play some tunes, and get into the brew-zone. (Plus, you're going to need the empties!) As Charlie says throughout his homebrewing bible "Relax! Don't worry! Have a homebrew!"

If you are embarking on this quest before it is acceptable to have a beer in your household, please keep the following poster in mind. Loosely translated, it says no beer will be served before 4 o'clock. Put one of these over your kitchen clock an you're in business! (My kids sent me this postcard while they were visiting family in Germany -- aren't they great kids?!)

Ok, now you need a recipe. As noted before, Charlie's book is pretty much all you will ever need. He has a chart in there listing 36 different styles that run the gamut from pale ales to lagers, marzens to weissbiers, pilsners to stouts, porters to lambics, bocks to bitters, ... you get the picture. And, there is a sample recipe for each one! Unless you go uber-brewer, you'll never need anything else to stay happy in this hobby for a very long time.

Most of Charlie's recipes are for 5 gallon batches. I prefer to brew 3 gallons at a time, so I have a handy little notebook where I keep detailed and tidy notes on the conversion of Charlie's measures to the amounts I need in my smaller batches. All you have to do is multiply eveything by 3/5, and remember that there are 28 grams in an ounce (rounding up to 30 makes the math easier if your doing it in your head), 16 ounces in a pound, 2.2 pounds in a kilogram, 454 grams in a pound, and 250 mililitres in a cup. These will help you swap measurement systems to make conversions easier. For example, most of his recipes say you need 1 oz. of hops at some point -- 3/5 of an ounce is impossible to measure, but if you convert it to 17 grams, you're in business! (As you can probably guess, you need a scale.)

The ingredients for a basic batch of beer are malt extracts (the picture shows both syrup and dried), grains (these add extra flavour, so I recommend you do a batch that calls for grains), hops (I use pelletized hops -- they're just regular hops that have been run through a hammer mill to make little pellets. Pelletized hops are easier to store and handle and retain their freshness for longer than fresh hops), and yeast. Be sure to buy two packs of yeast so you have a back-up if the first package should poop-out for some reason (it happened to me once in the last 13 batches, so it is not common, but you don't want to be tempted to throw bread yeast in there to save your batch!) On the equipment front, you need a stock pot, a spoon, and a fine mesh metal strainer.

You'll also need a 5 gallon bucket in which to do the first round of fermentation. A typical beer kit will have one of these buckets, a lid, a glass carboy, an air-lock, and various siphon hoses and other doohickeys that you may or may not need. The essential bits are the bucket, lid, carboy, airlock, and siphon hose.

Step 2 (step one was opening your beer) is to get your primary fermenter ready. Charlie's book (at least the version I have) advocates a single stage fermentation directly in a carboy. This is the (ok, one of the) only thing in the book I don't follow. To do single stage fermentation, you need to attach a blow-off hose to your carboy and cross your fingers that the whole thing doesn't get clogged and blow up all over the place. Personally, this sounds like a recipe for disaster, so I much prefer two stage fermentation where you let the brew go nuts in the less constricted environment of a bucket, then transfer it to a carboy later to mellow out and finish the process. Your call.

ANYWAY, to go two-stage you need to get your fermenter ready by sterilising it. I use Diversol, which is a pink powder that you mix with water (1 teaspoon per litre). I pour three litres of water into my bucket (it's handy to have a 1 litre measuring cup for all this), and add a tablespoon of Diversol (I chose this amount because I only have a tablespoon in the laundry room). I carefully swirl the mix around the bucket so it touches every surface, let it bucket sit around for a bit, and then swirl again.

At the same time, I pour a little out onto the lid, and let that sit there for a while too. (How long? No idea. There is no time on any of the instructions I have. I usually give each step a couple of minutes.) Sanitation is crucial to the process if you want a quality brew. There are freaky bacteria and yeast floating around all over the place, some of which will mess-up your beer if they get in there. You don't have to be insane about it, but take your time and do your sanitation properly. As Charlie says with almost annoying frequency, "Relax. Don't worry. Have a homebrew!"

Once I think my lid and bucket are sterile, I rinse them them. The lid is easy, but the bucket is a little trickier. I tilt the thing to the side and turn it so that tap water can run down the walls (you are going to use a lot of water) while I rotate the bucket. Once the walls are rinsed, I dump out the water and rinse it again. After 3 or 4 rinses all the chemicals should be gone.

Then I fill up the bucket with cold water. Your wort will be about 5 litres or so depending on the size of your stock pot, so try and fill your bucket so that it will reach the total volume of your recipe once the wort is poured in there (i.e. fill it to 3 gallons minus 5 litres -- I love being a mixed-unit Canadian -- if you're brewing a 3 gallon batch and have a 5 litre kettle). It's handy to get a Sharpie and mark all these volumes on the outside of your bucket to make life easier.

Get the bucket in the kitchen. (Holy crap! All we've done is fill the bucket with water, and we're already at 50 pages!)

Ok, the next thing to do is get your grains ready. This is what malted barley looks like before the mashing process. The malted seeds are toasted to varying levels to add nice flavours and colours to your brew. Weigh out your grains according to the recipe (or your custom calculations). Then get ready to crush them.

If you recall in the previous post, I said that a seed is like an egg. If you want to get the good stuff out, you have to crack the shell. I used to do this with a rolling pin on a cutting board, but that is SUPER messy and annoying. A mortar and pestle does a great job! Use a grain mill if you have one. Just don't grind them up too fine -- you don't want to create a pile of powder, you just want to crack the seed coats so some water can get it there.

Now get ready to BREW!!!

Fill your chosen kettle with water, leaving several inches of space (the malts will boost the volume, and you DO NOT want to try and get water out of the kettle later, whereas it is very easy to add more if you don't have enough).

Put the cold water on the stove and dump your crushed grains in there.

Crank the heat to high and wait until it starts to boil. This process slowly heats the grains and extracts the colour and flavour without boiling the seeds. Boiling would be bad because the extended high heat would start to extract other nasties from the seed coats like tannins that would make your brew astringent. A gentle and gradual increase in heat is what you want here.

Once the water is at the point of boiling, TURN OFF THE HEAT. This is key (and I haven't seen anyone else say this). Why? Because a) you have to get all those seeds out of there, and working over a bubbling cauldron is no fun (unless you happen to be in Macbeth), and b) you're going to put your malts in there soon and you definitely do not want to be dealing with high heat then.

Use your fine mesh metal strainer to scoop out the seeds. Dump them in a big bowl, and save the bowl because there will be more gunk to scoop-out later. When you think you've got them all out, stir the pot until you get a whirlpool and scoop again -- you should get a bunch more. Try and get them all out so you don't end up with the tannin problem discussed above (but of course, "Relax. Don't worry..." you know).

Now it's malt time! If you use a syrup, pour that in. Having the heat off at this point is crucial, because the syrup will sink straight to the bottom of your pot. If the heat is on, there is every chance the thick goo will stick down there and start burning. This will RUIN your brew, so having the heat off right now is a good idea. (Personally, I think it's a GENIUS idea.) It's also a good idea to stir while you're doing this to get the syrup dissolved and distributed in the wort.

If you use dried extracts, just pour them in. They will gradually sink and dissolve, but again no heat and a good stir are good ideas here. (As you can see, I pour from a bowl. Don't try and pour dry malt directly from the bag -- it will get all gummed up, will fall out in big, splashy clumps, and will generally make you miserable.)

Now. Focus. This is the danger zone. (But "Relax..."). For the next hour, you'll be boiling a pot full of hot sugar. There are a bunch of proteins and other good things in the pot that have a tendancy to seal the surface. If this happens, you're in for a BOIL OVER, which is the messiest, biggest bummer associated with brewing. So avoid it! (Remember this now!) A boil over happens when the steam bubbles can't break the surface, so instead they LIFT the surface and pull up all the underlying liquid at the same time. And by up, I mean up and right out of the pot and all over your stove, floor, and hot element. So it's up to you to watch the pot, stir it now an then, lift it off the burner if the foam starts to rise, and modulate the heat to maintain a gentle, open boil. If, for some reason, you have to leave the kitchen, get the pot off the heat and give it a stir, and get back in there as soon as you can. I find liquid malt extracts are less likely to boil over, but it's always a risk so be prepared!

Once the malt is dissolved you can get the heat back on and add your bittering hops. There are three basic times to add hops to your wort. The first hops go in right at the start and they make the beer bitter (all of the flavour and aroma from the hops will boil off over the course of an hour). Flavour hops go in around mid-boil, since those compounds are more volatile than the bitter elements, but not so volatile as the aromatic compounds. Aroma hops go in during the last two minutes of the boil, after which the wort is immediately dumped into the cold water in your fermenter (aren't you glad it's sitting there ready to go?) to keep the aromas from boiling away.

All this to say, you should measure-out each of your hops additions so they are ready to go at the appointed time (the stove timer is a great thing to use, by the way).

Once your hour of fun in the kitchen is almost up, it's time to strain the wort again. The gunky organic residue from the hops will decompose in your brew, so you have to filter them out as well as you can. You will be pouring your wort through a seive into the fermenter, but it will clog up if you hit it with the whole mass of hops at once, so it's a good idea to get most of them out of there now. Note that you should do this BEFORE you add the aroma hops, since there will be no time to spare once those go in (let them get removed while you pour into the fermenter).

As with the grains, just stir and scoop and repeat until you have most of the gunk removed. Your seive will clog up, but if you jiggle it and tilt it, you should be able to drain it ok. Whack it upside down on your grain bowl, and go back for more until you are bored and figure you've removed most of the gunk.

Once you're done with removing the hops residues, leave the seive in the pot so it can sterilise. You have to pour your beer through it on the way to the fermenter, so you want it as pristine (bacterially speaking) as possible.

Then set your timer for two minutes and add the aroma hops (if your recipe calls for them) and get ready to SPARGE!!

Sparging is the process of pouring your wort through a seive to remove all the organic debris that your don't want in your fermenter. We've already done much of the sparging by removing the grains, the flavour hops, and the bitterness hops. This last bit of sparging will remove the aroma hops and any of the other stuff you missed the first times around.

Get your seive out of the pot and balance it on your fermenting bucket.

Use your leg to hold it in place if you don't have a helper. Pour the hot wort through the seive and into your fermenter. You WILL make a mess, no matter how hard you try not to. Oven mitts are handy here, so is a steady hand and a gentle pour.

Once you've sparged, get the seive out of there, pop the lid on (don't snap it down, just cover the bucket), and take the brew to wherever you plan to let it rest for the next week. Some sources recommend stirring at this point, but I don't bother and just let the wort mingle with the water for the next 6 hours while I wait for it to cool down enough for the yeast.

(Now, some people will extract some of the liquid and measure the specific gravity at this point so they can get an idea of the potential alcohol content of their final beer. I find the whole specific gravity thing a big pain in the butt and so I avoid it entirely -- I have only done it with one batch of beer, and then only patially. It is useful if you're in a big hurry and want to bottle as soon as possible, but I usually let my batches mellow out for several weeks and so have never found this whole thing all that necessary. Your call.)

Once the wort has cooled (you could sterilise a thermometer and keep checking, but I find that a pain so I just wait for 6 hours or so) you pitch the yeast! All you do is open the yeast packet, open your fermenter, and sprinkle the yeast on the surface of the brew. Cover the fermenter again (again, don't snap the lid on -- the CO2 needs to get out of there) and let it rest for a week.

It's a good idea to check in the morning to ensure your yeast has taken. The brew should be all bubbly and foamy by the next day. If it isn't, pitch another package of yeast (aren't you glad you got two?). Check again the next day, and if it still isn't bubbly, change brew supply stores. Once you know the yeast is working, leave it alone for a week -- resist the urge to peek, since every time you open the fermenter, you're giving nasty bacteria and wild yeasts the chance to get in there and run wild with your creation!

Next up, secondary fermentation! (Having fun? I am!)

BEER! Part 1 - The Basics

2012-01-22T05:53:00.000-08:00

Judas Priest! (And I don't mean the band!) I thought yesterday would be a quick little foray into the various stages of brewing followed by a few wee blog posts and that would be that. Well, I started at 10 am, finished all the brewing and photo shooting by 5 pm and then said "screw it, I'm eating!" So now I'm done eating (and watching a movie and sleeping), and here I am: back with the program.

I figured it would be a good idea to describe a little history and the basic brewing process before we get down to brass tacks. This way you'll have an idea of what we're trying to achieve with each of these crazy steps.

Beer (or, more specifically ale) is a fermented beverage made from water, malted grain, and various flavourings. The water part is pretty straight-forward, so we'll skip that.

Malted grain, on the other hand, could use some explaining. Grains are basically seeds that we eat. A typical seed consists of an embryo (read: baby plant), a bunch of starch to provide the embryo with food, and a shell to protect the whole thing. (It's basically the plant version of an egg.) When a seed germinates, it undergoes a transformation -- the embryo springs to life and the starch starts to become sugar (this is key here). Malting is the process by which seeds are germinated to make them more sugary. When the sugar content is at its peak, the seeds are dried to stop the process and the resulting malt is often toasted to make it extra tasty. The whole brewing process relies on this sugar.

Modern brewing consists of cooking up malted grain (usually barley) to extract as much sugar as possible. This process is called mashing. The mash is then strained to yield a sugary liquid called the wort (are you taking notes?). The wort is flavoured with various things depending on the goals of the brewer (hops are pretty popular), and once this sugary, flavoured tea has cooled down a little, some yeast is pitched in there (in a process called, not surprisingly "pitching"). The yeast then eats up all the sugar and turns it into alcocol and carbon dioxide (i.e. fizz) in the process. Three cheers for yeast! (And we won't dwell on the fact that the alcohol and CO2 are basically yeast pee and farts.) Eventually, the poor yeast run out of food and go dormant and sink to the bottom of whatever vessel they happen to be in. At this point the resulting brew can be poured off and bottled or put into kegs or guzzled straight away if you're in a big hurry. And that's it! Easy! (Incidentally, all of this boiling and fermenting made beer one of the safest things to drink back in the middle ages -- most of us wouldn't be here if not for beer!)

Mashing grain requires a fair degree of dedication and some special equipment, however it is possible to brew perfectly brilliant ales with malt extracts. These extracts are made from strained mash which has been boiled down into a syrup, or REALLY boiled down into a powder. You can therefore skip the whole mashing phase (and you want to) by purchasing some extract, adding water, and continuing on from there. That's how I make my beer, and it's the process we'll follow in the upcoming posts.

You have to wonder how anyone figured all this out. Someone back in hallowed antiquity had to leave some seeds out in the rain long enough for them to sprout, but not for so long that they couldn't be dried out and saved. Then they had to make porridge or something from it. Then they had to get full and leave their bowl of porridge out in the rain for a couple of days, allowing it to get colonised by wild yeasts. Then, and this is the kicker, they had to EAT the resulting bubbly goo, catch a buzz and realise that they'd invented brewing! This doesn't reflect well on our poor ancestors -- how hungry would you have to be to eat smelly week-old bubbly porridge that was clearly, shall we say, suspect? Maybe they just fed it to the dog, and decided to try it later after they saw Rover stumbling around with his buddies, telling jokes, and laughing his ass off. Who knows?

In any event, this primordial beer was pretty thick soupy stuff, since they weren't likely to bother with the whole straining phase. You can still get something like it in Southern Africa, where they make Chibuku. It's an unstrained beer brewed from thin maize porrige. It's like a boozy corn milkshake and tastes just as good as it sounds -- the beer that drinks like a meal!

In terms of flavourings, ales can be flavoured with any number of botanical ingredients (Hoegaarden does a good job of trying to use them all). Hops only became dominant in the 1500s as a result of all kinds of nasty political intrigue (for a great set of articles on all this, check out the Gruit Ale & Unhopped Beers site). Prior to the hop hegemony, several narcotic and psychotropic herbs were used to add extra kick to the brews. As you may have guessed, an ale made with these funky herbs is called a gruit, but ale was basically the catch-all term for any of the brews we now commonly call beer. Beer was the term used in the middle ages to distinguish ales that were flavoured with hops -- which were regarded with some suspicion for a long time.

These days the distinction most people make is between ales (British-style brews) and lagers (German and Czech styles). Lagering, however, doesn't tell you what's in the brew, it simply refers to the process of aging the beer in a cold cellar for an extended period (ales skip this step -- so if you're in a hurry, go for an ale). Lager is from the German word for "stockpile" or "store," and since the Germans were pretty keen on hops (the Bavarians passed the Reinheitsgebot law back in 1516 which required beer to be made from hops) you can bet that what they were lagering was beer. These cold temperatures require yeasts that like it cold, while the yeasts used to make ales like to chug away at room temperature. So the distinction between lager and ale can also be made on the basis of the kind of yeast used (although it is possible to use lager yeasts at ale temperatures -- confusing, eh?). All this to say, there are lots of kinds of yeast out there that handle certain conditions better than others (e.g. temperature, alcohol content, etc.) and that will lend specific flavours and characteristics to your brews. Your recipe will guide you to which yeast you should use (I've even seen people use bread yeast in a pinch, but I don't really recommend it).

The term "beer" is pretty much redundant in modern times, since most ales are now flavoured with hops, which makes everything beer whether you lager it or not. The great thing about being a homebrewer is that you can burst free of convention and make whatever you want, in any style, with whatever flavourings (psychotropic or not!) you like. It's a vast world of history and cooking all mixed into one glorious outcome: a fine pint!

So roll up your sleeves and let's get this party started!

BEER! Part 0 - The Preamble.

2012-01-17T17:41:00.000-08:00

I've been considering this post for a long time. Beer is a fundamental component of my existence: I love the stuff! As you may have guessed by now, I also like cooking, eating, being merry, and all that. So, when I discovered I could make beer, and that it was legal to boot, I was in heaven! But my waffling began (Belgians make GREAT beer and waffles, by the way -- remember this now) when I figured that there must be a million or so YouTube beer brewing videos and countless other tweets, bleats, and squeaks on the topic. However, the other day I got a couple of Facebook messages from old friends with questions about beer etc. that told me: "Joe! Yes, you! People need your help! They want to brew, but haven't found enough info and cool insights elsewhere! Get thee unto thine blog and 'splain them what to do!" I've learned that you can't ignore suggestions like that, so here we are.

My first foray into brewing happened at York University. My buddy Matt and I saw the obvious financial benefits of homebrewing and embarked on our money saving and brain cell wasting crusade (the problem was we never had enough empties at bottling time, so had to down them all before the next batch -- fun for a while, but as always, there was a price to be paid [this is EXTRA interesting because Price is Matt's last name! -- but please don't put two and two together and steal his identity or anything.]).

ANYWAY! Before you embark on this project you need to meet Charlie Papazian. He's the beer guru/god who got the whole movement going back in the 70s or 80s or some such era. His book The New Complete Joy of Homebrewing has been my bible since back in the days of Matt (i.e. 1995 or so). Get a copy (or one of the infintie reprints) now.

Papazian outlines the process (which I will detail here), some history, and most importantly has all the recipes you'll ever need (unless you go uber-nerd and decide to devote your life to brewing, which is great mind you, but there's other stuff too, so don't get too carried away.... Just sayin'.)

I had intended this post to be a trilogy describing the three main processes: the wort, secondary fermentation, and bottling. This post started as the The Wort post, but it quickly became clear that you'd be way too bored by now if you actually wanted to get going: thus we now have a 4 volume trilogy beginning with The Preamble.

As luck (dumb luck, by the way and just so you know) would have it, I have enough batches of beer on the go to pull-off this photoshoot/blog post in one weekend (The Powers that Be! willing, of course). So we'll go through the basic recipe (The Wort), the mingling of flavours (Secondary "fermentation"), and the last stage (Bottling). Following this is "The Long Wait" and I am still of two or three minds on what to say about that. We may end up with a five-part trilogy in the end (The Powers that Be! willing, of course [getting tired of that yet? Just you wait! You have NO idea how annoying I can be!]).

In the meantime, wishing you all all the best, and depending how my Saturday goes we'll see what we've got by then. Wish me luck! I'll be wishing you luck too!

Postscript: am I qualified to do this? Well, first I love beer. Second, I've brewed lots and am still alive and still like it (knock on wood). And third, but not least, according to my very dear grandmother there are Scottish brewers in my family tree. There may also be Vikings (explaining my bon vivant leanings and why I had such a grand time in Copenhagen and Stockholm -- but that's another story...). And, I have since learned there is a Russian in there too -- and they know a thing or too about brewing, believe me. So, to answer my own question, you better believe it Sweetie Pie! :D

BEER

2012-01-17T15:44:00.000-08:00

Very soon, I will post a trilogy of beer. It will show you how to make the most glorious of all human inventions (although it is clear that The Powers That Be! helped us out on this one). Stay tuned...

...this weekend ... (The Powers That Be! willing, of course)....

Peace, bros and sisters!

The book I can't blog from.

2012-01-15T09:33:00.000-08:00

I bought a copy of Ruhlman's Twenty some time ago, but only got the chance to give it a detailed look this morning. The basic idea of the book is to explain twenty essential techniques/ingredients with sample recipes in order to give you a platform from which to become a better cook (no matter what level you are starting from). So you have in there chapters on salt, water, grilling, roasting, soup, etc. with a few sample recipes to illustrate essential ideas and methods. I think it's great!

When I saw the Dutch Oven Bread recipe this morning, I thought "what a cool idea for a blog post!"

Then I turned the page. He already did it! Look at all the picutres -- pretty much exactly the same one's I'd typically show. The only difference is that he has a better scale than I do, and his mixer is white (and he can show both hands at once since one isn't fumbling with the camera and getting it all doughy).

All this to say, if you like the format here with lots of picutres, personal anecdotes, and an emphasis on the how and why we do things, then I'm pretty sure you'll dig this book. I won't likely be using it as an inspiration for posting here, but some of the ideas are bound to creep in (the advice on starting your lardons in water sounds brilliant, for example).

So, off to the kitchen I go for some great bread and a skillet roasted chicken. (I haven't tested these yet, of course, but I have high hopes -- and I don't have to take a bunch of picutres at the same time!)

Bacon and onion pizza?

2012-01-08T14:22:00.000-08:00

I don't often revisit recipes on this blog (i.e. I never do), but in this case I think I've simplified this dish enough to warrant a re-post. The original recipe called for more pans and more work (read: dishes -- I am sure the magazine people have lots of minions to do their dishes, which I don't, so as a consequence fewer dishes is better). In addition, the kind folks at Lodge are running a contest for best pizza during the Super Bowl playoffs. I am expecting to be disqualified since this "pizza" doesn't fit the typical definition, but at the same time I want to share it with all my fellow Super Bowl fans out there, especially since my last name starts with St., and I fully expect New Orleans to take that trophy home again! (And if they don't, then at least you can enjoy this awesome 'za in the process.)

The improvement here is that you can cook the whole thing in one pan. I went for a 12" cast-iron skillet, which has about 3/4 of the surface area of the 9"x13" baking pan that the original recipe called for. This called for some multiplication to get the proportions right -- fortunaltely my calculator batteries from grade 12 (30 YEARS AGO!!) are still working.

First, you need about 4 slices of thick bacon (6 oz. if you have a scale). Slice this into fat matchsticks and get it frying over medium heat.

In the meantime, chop 4 small onions in half, and then lengthwise into thin slices (the recipe calls for two medium ones, but I like onions, so your call who to follow).

Once the bacon is almost done, you should get the dough ready. This is not a traditional pizza dough since it has no yeast in it and relies on eggs to get some lift. At the same time, it means you don't have to sit around for an hour waiting for it to rise, kneading it, etc. This puppy is ready in 10 minutes! To make the dough, mix 1 cup of flour and 2 tsp of dry mustard with two beaten eggs and 200 ml of milk (if you don't have metric on your measuring cup, aim for half-way between 3/4 cup and 1 cup).

The dough batter should rest for 10 minutes, which about exactly how long your onions should take. First, get your bacon out of the pan with a slotted spoon, leaving as much fat behind as you can.

Then add a pat of butter if the pan looks a little dry (your call here, bacon fat plus butter is a serious artery issue, but it is also a seriously delicious issue -- again, up to you).

Get the onions in there, add some salt and pepper, and stir them around now and then. As soon as your onions are in, turn on the oven and get it heating to 425F -- it should be hot by the time the onions are done.

While all this is going on you should grate some cheese. I chose Gruyere, which is Swiss, and so not very pizzaey, but which also happens to compliment bacon and onions like a house on fire. Use mozza or cheddar as substitutes if you like (but don't if you can help it!).

Anyway, you need a little pile of cheese to sprinkle on top.

When the onions are getting brown, remove them from the pan and put them wherever you put the bacon. Take the pan off the heat too.

Again, if the pan looks a little dry you can add a splash more butter (disclaimer: but consult your doctor first if you have heart issues).

Now it's time to assemble! Pour the dough batter into the pan...

...dump the onions and bacon on there, ...

... add the cheese, and fire the whole mess in the oven for 30 minutes.

When she's done, she'll look like this! (i.e. AWESOME!)

Let your pie rest a few minutes, then ease it out of the pan with a couple of spatulas (look ma, no stick!)

Slice into 8 servings and enjoy!! (On a personal note, I am fully capable of eating a whole one of these by myself, so you may want to make a second or third at the same time if you have company -- just sayin'!)

So ends the bacon and onion saga -- and my arteries! Peace, people!

Who dat?!

The Widow's Kiss

2012-01-07T17:56:00.000-08:00

No, no, no... this is not about romance. Well, maybe a litte, but it's romance in the sense of nostalgia, rather than ... well ... the other kind. This is a cocktail that dates back to 1895.

An interesting thing about cocktails is that they used to be morning drinks according to Ted Haigh (a.k.a. Dr. Cocktail) in Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails. Did you catch that? Morning drinks: i.e. not meant to be guzzled with reckless abandon on a Friday night. Cocktails were composed of various tonics designed to help you recover from the night before (of guzzling other things with reckless abandon). This particular one is a veritable Ark of the Covenant -- it contains Chartreuse (1605), Bénédictine (1510), Calvados (1554) and the baby of the bunch, Angostura bitters (1870). Each of these on it's own is basically medicine, and each is also in the 40-55% alcohol category, so when you mix them all together, you're not talking Fuzzy Navel.

Personally, I have a particular fondness for tonics of this sort, and keep a bottle of Unicum (see the cross? Medicine!) in my freezer for those occasions when I feel my digestion is out of whack, or I am suffering from some other vintage complaint like catarrh, pleurisy, consumtion, or malaria or whatever.

To whip up a Widow's Kiss, you'll need 1 1/2 oz. Calvados, 3/4 oz. of Chartreuse, 3/4 oz. of Bénédictine, and 2 dashes of Angostura bitters. Put all this medicine in a cocktail shaker with a load of ice, shake away, and strain into any sort of cool glass that strikes your fancy. You can garnish with a cherry if you like, or enjoy your kiss straight up. Your call.

I did not happen to whip this up in the morning as you may (or may not) have guessed by the lighting. This was an evening affair (woo!), inspired by the fact that I stumbled across the recipe today, managed to find Chartreuse across the river in Québec at the SAQ, and got a copy of Billy's Best Bottles 2012 (renewing my interest in wine, precipitating a certain degree of shopping and testing, and leading to the need for a pre-emptive strike on tomorrow morning). :D

Cheers, folks! X! (And be sure to use the toast from the wonderful movie Schultze Gets the Blues: "For medicinal purposes!" -- I use this all the time regardless [shhh...!].)

(Disclaimer: please adhere to recommended dosage, and note that if you don't like freaky weird bitter stuff like olives, Johnny Cash, anchovies, and the odd splash of Unicum from the freezer, please steer clear.)

Asparagus?!

2012-01-03T17:40:00.000-08:00

Welcome to 2012, folks. Hopefully The World doesn't end this year, but if it does, kudos to the Mayans!

This recipe has far fewer photos than I am accustomed to. This is because I only decided to post it AFTER it was cooked. As you can see, I've been Mr. Delinquent-Pants on this blog, and the whole log-in-be-creative-upload-a-bunch-of-crap-fix-the-spelling-thing has weighed heavily on my psyche the last few months. Plus, I've been busy with Christmas and New Years, so boo! Happy New Year's by the way, I wish all of you all the best in what may be the final year of human history -- or maybe not.

In spite of this doom-and-gloom possibility, I did make a resolution: I have decided to keep my beer consumption down to 1 litre a day (on average). I am already a pint in the hole (on January 3rd!) so this is clearly no mean feat. I think the Russian and Viking elements of my genome keep kicking the snot out of the Native American parts, but I am hoping (against previous experince and recorded history) against hope that willpower will prevail! (Ok, stop laughing...on with the recipe!)

I was inspired to whip this up by Jamie Oliver. His Jamie at Home cookbook has a gardening section in which he casually mentions in the asparagus section that the stuff cleans your liver. HOW IS THIS SOMETHING I ONLY LEARN AT 44 YEARS OF AGE?!?! Naturally, I've been eating tons of the stuff ever since (in spite of the pee thing and the eat local thing -- this is medicinal, and hence gets an exemption).

A secondary source of inspiration is the book Stir Frying to the Sky's Edge by Grace Young: this is the ULTIMATE wok cookery book quant a moi, and I've been whipping up some cool dishes in my super neat-o de Buyer wok (this is digressing, isn't it?).

Finally, the tertiary source is The Art of Living according to Joe Beef. It inspires me because it has Joe in it. It also resonates because it's all about good cooking, lots of fat, lots of libations, and gardening. What could be better? Seriously! I'm asking you!!

ANYWAY, here we go. All you need is a bunch of asparagus, a clove of garlic, some lardons (Joe Beef has a whole text box on lardons according to the seasons -- so great!), a bit of parm, some salt, some chile, and a groovy skillet.

If you live anywhere near me, and if you keep you skillets under the sink, the damn things will be freaking freezing when you take them out to cook. I like to sit them on the stove under low heat (e.g. 1 or 2 on my electric stove) to warm up a little before I get started. So do that.

While that's happening, chop the bottoms off of your asparagus (I do this while the elastics are still on -- it is way easier. I used a square skillet, and sliced the stems so they would fit.) Then soak the heads in a bowl of water to ease the sand out.

Chop some lardons and pop them in the skillet. Crank the heat to medium (YEAH, CRANK IT!) so the fat will render. While that's going on, get a clove of garlic from those groovy folks at Rainbow Heritage Gardens and slice it up.

When the lardons are getting crispy, add your garlic. Stir that around for a second. Then add the asparagus and let it fry away for a couple of minutes, stirring and/or shaking it around as you see fit. Towards the end, add a dash of piment d'esplette or some similar chile pepper, stir that around, and then get it on a plate (you can test a spear if you like, but cooking asparagus is more about warming it up that cooking it). Add a dash of salt too -- I used Himalayan salt, which always kind of freaks me out; I mean who am I to take some salt that settled in an ocean a million years ago, made it up to Mt. Everest, and then eat it so it ends up in my body or back in some lake again? This is seriously heavy cooking.

ANYWAY, add a sprinkle of shaved parm, get all of the lardons and garlic on there, and take your medicine!! Cheers! Now, if you'll excuse me, I could use a sidecar. Three cheers for resolutions! :D

Pavlova (and some math)

2011-11-13T08:53:00.000-08:00

I whipped up a spaghetti alla carbonara the other night for the girls, and once again found myself with three egg whites that I had no idea what to do with. I could have used them in an omelette, of course, but as you may have gleaned from the other posts in this blog, an egg white omelette is not exactly my style. What to do?

Gwyneth Paltrow to the rescue! I recently purchased her new cookbook, and was going through it to mark the recipes I want to try when I came across her recipe for pavlova. This dessert is basically baked egg whites, is super simple to prepare, and also happens to be delicious. I was in business! Incidentally, the cookbook is great. I originally purchased it because of the title: My Father's Daughter. As you may know, I'm a dad with daughters who wants to instill in his girls a love of food and cooking. The book naturally seemed like a good fit. In fact, I was really surprised just how personal and genuine the text is, and really enjoyed reading the accounts of Ms. Paltrow's memories of her dad, their meals, and the cooking they did together. I'd recommend the book for that alone, but it also has a stack of stellar recipes in there.

Pavlova was created in the 1920s to honour the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova. There is some debate as to whether the creator was Australian or from New Zealand. I'm not touching that debate, but I have seen a pavlova with kiwis on it -- just sayin'.

Now for the math. The recipe calls for 4 egg whites. My carbonara recipe always leaves me with 3. I didn't want to add another one, since I'd then be stuck with an egg yolk and wouldn't have really solved anything with this whole enterprise (beam me up!). So I just multiplied everything in the recipe by 3/4 and was off to the races. So, you'll need three egg whites, 3/4 of a pinch of salt (I know, I'm hilarious), a little less than 1/2 teaspoon of white vinegar, 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon of granulated sugar (or 9/16 cup of sugar if you prefer -- neat that a tablespoon is 1/16 of a cup though), 3/4 tablespoon of cornstarch, and a little less than 1/2 tsp of vanilla. The blueberries and whipping cream are for the topping later (mmm...). Heat your oven to 350 ̊̊F now.

I never seem to have white vinegar in the house, so I used this stuff instead: vinegar made out of maple syrup. How cool is that? I love it in salad dressings, and figured the little boost of flavour could only make the pavlovas better.

The first step is to put the egg whites, vinegar, and salt in a mixing bowl and start whipping them up. Go full blast until you get soft peaks.

Meanwhile, mix the cornstarch and sugar together -- if your cornstarch has gotten a little lumpy get your fingers in there to break it up. Add the sugar mixture to the egg whites in thirds, stirring to fully incorporate each time.

Finally, put the vanilla in there and crank the mixer up again until you get stiff peaks (or peak, as the case may be) on the egg whites.

Put some parchment paper on a baking sheet and spoon the batter out into 6 rounds (the full recipe gets you 8). Flatten the meringues into circles, and put an indentation in the middle of each one while you're sculpting them. Put them in the 350 ̊F oven for 10 minutes, then lower the heat to 200 ̊̊F and bake them for one hour.

After an hour they should be a nice golden colour. Turn off the heat, prop the oven door open with a wooden spoon, and let them cool in the oven for another hour (this is a good day to make chicken stock since it keeps you puttering around near the kitchen too). Gwyneth specifically mentions the spoon in the door trick. My oven door will stay open by itself, but I think it stays open a little too much and would cool down too fast -- plus you never know if the door will get bumped into and closed by accident, so best to go with the spoon in the door plan. This is also a good idea if you have some kind of zealous door closer in your house. (Note, this is a nice way to warm up the kitchen on a cold November morning!)

When you're ready to eat, gently remove the meringues from the parchment paper and dress them up with some whipped cream and fruit. Gwyneth recommend blueberries, and I couldn't agree more. Strawberries would be great too. You could even use kiwis....

Egg whites could meet no finer fate. Приятного аппетита!

Onion and bacon tart. Oh, yes!

2011-11-12T15:40:00.000-08:00

The latest issue of Saveur (no. 142) has a brillinat feature article on onions. I was flipping through it yesterday when my eyes lit upon this recipe. It seemed so amazing that I absolutely knew it had to be cooked-up as soon as possible. So here it is!

Incidentally, do yourself a favour and grab this issue. The onion centrefold (ish) is to die for, and there is also a great feature on Eastern European soups, which at this time of year is just what the doctor ordered. But I digress!

For this recipe, you'll need: 6 ounces of slab bacon, 4 tablespoons of butter (IT'S ALREADY AWESOME!), 2 yellow onions (I went for 3 just because), 1 1/2 cups of flour, 2 teaspoons of dry mustard, 1 1/4 cups of milk, and 3 eggs (even more brilliant! ANYTHING with bacon and eggs in it is like a dreamy recipe of breakfast wonderment!). But I digress again....

Step one is to cut your bacon into "matchsticks." This is what the recipe calls for, but I've never seen matchsticks quite so stubby, wobbly, and fat, but you get the idea. Fry you bacon on medium until it gets nice and crispy.

In the meantime, get the onions ready. The recipe says to slice them lengthwise. I was noticing though, that my onions were kind of stumpy, and what I would normally consider the length was in fact the width! Anyway, I cut them from root to stem in thin slices. You should too.

While all this is going on you should heat your oven to 425.

When the bacon is done, remove it to a plate with a slotted spoon. Pour the bacon fat into a 9" x 11" baking dish (see how awesome this is?!). Put the butter into the still warm skillet, and fry up your onions...

...until they are nice and carmelised. (Note the tongs -- you are supposed to "sprinkle" these onions on the batter later, but sprinkling isn't really an option with your fingers (they're hot!), hence the tongs.)

While the onions are cooking, prepare the batter. This is basically a Yorkshire pudding batter like we had in Toad in the Hole, but here the toads are a little smaller (my eldest suggested worms in the hole as an alternative.) In any event, the first step is to mix the flour, dry mustard, and pepper.

In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the milk.

Pour it all together, and work it around until mostly combined.

Let the batter rest for around 10 minutes. During that time, fire your baking dish into the oven to heat up. This is important, since if you pour a Yorkshire pudding batter into an ice-cold cast iron pan, you're in for some sad dissapointment. You need the boost of pan heat to get that dough headed skyward! (GET YOUR OVEN MITTS ON NOW!)

After ten minutes of resting and heating, pour you batter into the pan. (I HOPE YOU HAD YOUR OVEN MITTS ON!)

Add the onions and bacon (WOW!).

Have a beer! (EVEN BETTER!)

And put it back in the oven (WITH YOUR OVEN MITTS) for 30 minutes. And then, voila!! Brilliant!!!

It may take a little delicate manouvering to remove the tart from the pan, so be patient -- you can do it! (Note, those extra greasy bits stuck to the bottom taste REALLY good -- just sayin').

The recipe says this can serve 6. I cut it into 4, and, speaking from experience, I could eat the whole thing (if I wanted to, which I did). So this serves from 1 to 6, depending on the nature of your guests. (Don't invite me unless you make two!)

Viva l'ongion!!

Potimarron squash soup: day 215.

2011-11-08T17:20:00.000-08:00

Yowza! Two months without a post!! As you can see, my foray into the fine and admirable world of beer brewing has been taking a lot of my free time (both on the brewing front and the emptying-bottles-for-the-next-batch front). As several people have been attributed to saying, "Beer is proof that God loves us!" Amen to that, brothers and sisters. But I digress...

You're here for the squash soup recipe. Well, as luck would have it, my dear squashes decided to ripen the very day I was about to leave for Stockholm for a week. (Stockholm rocks, by the way. Special thanks to the Akkurat Pub for brilliant cask conditioned ales, The Delta Saints for a great show at the Akkurat on the day I arrived, and to my brilliant dance partners Julie, Alessandro, and Kristina who made Viveka's party a real hoot! But I digress again...).

ANYWAY, I knew that if I left my squashes in the garden while I was off dancing in Stockholm the squirrels would make them look like this (!) -- as they did with the poor sucker I left out "just to see."

Thankfully I had the presence of mind to harvest them when they looked like this, after which I hid them in the cold room in the basement (with all that beeeeeeer!) to await their fate in the soup pot a week later.

So, on with the recipe (finally!). You'll need 1 potimarron squash (see here to start your own 215 day odessey if they are not at your local store), 3 leeks (or two fat ones), 3 cups of milk, about 3 cups of water, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and for a garnish: a tart apple, some toasted hazelnuts, and a blub of heavy cream.

The first thing to do is give your squash a scrub. It goes in the pot peel and all so you'll want it to be mostly clean. Then hack the thing in half with a cleaver (that comes all the way from China -- but be careful!), scoop out the seeds (save them for next year!), slice it into wedges, and then chop those wedges into little cubes. Phew!

Now get those leeks clean. As you know (or will know soon) leeks are usually full of sand. The coolest way to clean this gunk out is to slice the leek lengthwise almost to the root, and then open the two sides like a book under a running tap to wash the goop out from between the layers.

Once the leeks are clean, chop 'em up!

Put the leeks, squash, milk, and water into a big Dutch oven. Add a good dose of salt, and bring it all to a boil. Then lower the heat and simmer uncovered for about half an hour (until the squash is soft).

Once the squash is cooked, it's time to puree! If you don't have a food processor, this will be no fun, so skip the whole recipe -- OR, if you're already 214 days in, peel the squash before you cook it and use a food mill or potato ricer or some other retro implement to get the job done. The peeling will be key though, since without those whirring Moulinex blades, your hopes of rendering the peel edible will be dashed. (I sure hope you read the whole recipe first like you're supposed to.) Puree in batches so the food processor doesn't overflow (never, ever, fun).

Now is a good time to switch pots, since you need a place to put the puree. At this point you can decide if you want to thin the soup with a little more milk -- totally personal preference here.

Season with nutmeg (however much you think is reasonable) and add some salt and pepper if a taste makes you think it's deficient. Then heat it up again in the nice clean pot.

While it's heating, get your garnishes ready.

Toast some hazelnuts in a skillet.Then chop 'em up.

Chop an apple nice and fine.

And serve! Put the apple and nuts in the bottom of your soup bowls, ladle in the soup, and drizzle with a little cream. Looks great, tastes great, and was almost worth the 215 day wait! :D Bon appetit! And special thanks to Dorie Greenspan whose recipe got this whole ball rolling so many days ago!

Wood

2011-09-10T06:07:00.000-07:00

You may have noticed that almost all of the utensils I use in my kitchen are made of wood. This is partly because I think plastic is gross, but has more to do with the fact that I think wood is beautiful! The trouble is, wood doesn't stay beautiful for very long if you don't look after it. (Put it in a dishwasher and it's toast!)

So, every 6 months or so I devote an hour to wood maintenance. Basically, all you have to do is oil everything (cutting boards, utensils, pizza peels, bowls, rolling pins, knife handles, etc.). The difficulty comes in chosing the correct oil. I looked into this for some time before finally deciding on mineral oil as my preservative of choice. I balked at this for some time, thinking it was some evil petroleum product and wondering who would ever put such stuff on a food contact surface. I came around when I found out that people actually drink this stuff and you can get it in the pharmacy (make sure you get the one meant for human consumption, I don't know if there is another version, but just sayin'.) I did consider several plant based oils first, but ALL of them have the risk of going rancid, and if that happens you can pretty much kiss your utensil good-bye because you'll never get it out of there. I have some spoons from Stéphane de Sève (a vendor at the Landsdowne Farmer's Market) that I REALLY like, so there was no way I'd risk that.

All you need to do is gather your supplies and start oiling. I use a cutting board as a base to keep things clean. I pour a big blob of oil on there and use that to soak a rag which I use to apply the oil to the utensils. It's important to use a cloth rag here, since paper will just disintegrate and make a God-awful mess. I save old tea towels for this job.

Here are the finished utensils. Olive wood and beech wood respond particularly well and look really nice when done. I think I may have a hoarding issue in the works here.

For cutting boards, make sure you do both sides and the edges.

As you can see, it makes a world of difference!

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to the kitchen store to check out the spoons -- I think I have room for just one more.

Zukes!

2011-09-04T12:53:00.000-07:00

I find summer squash really charming, although it's easy for them to lose that charm by the time they hit the plate. This recipe should take care of that problem. It turns those lovely looking (but also watery and insipid) little creatures into a savoury medley with very few ingredients.

This recipe comes from an old issue of Kitchen Garden (no. 14). The magazine didn't last too long in circulation, but I always though it was kind of neat the way it combined advice on growing with advice on cooking. This dish is from Rick Bayless (the Mexican food guru) whose article offers several ways to whip up zucchini. Ah, zucchini! The vigorous vegetable that sees gardeners stealing around in their neighbourhoods after dark trying to leave grocery bags of the fecund fruits on unsuspecting door steps in an effort to stem the tide of this copious crop. But no longer should you fear this spirited squash: this is a good recipe!

For this dish you'll need about a pound of summer squash (I like small ones), 1 teaspoon of salt, pepper, 5 cloves of garlic, a lime, 1/2 teaspoon of dried oregano, oil and butter for cooking, and a sprinkle of parsley if you have some.

The first thing to do is chop the zucchini into 1/2 inch cubes. Small fruits don't need to be peeled, but if you got a big honking one from your neighbour, you'll want to remove the skin first.

Sprinkle the salt on the chopped squash, mix it around, and let it drain for half an hour. This is supposed to draw the bitterness out of the fruits (which I have never noticed, really) and also helps firm them up for frying.

While that's going on, thinly slice your garlic cloves.

Then put the garlic on to fry in a tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of oil. The idea is to slowly toast the garlic, so do this over medium low heat (the recipe calls for browning over low heat for about 3 minutes, but clearly Rick's low is not my low, since the garlic sat there forever and did nothing much -- I cranked it up to 4 to get things moving in the end.) Note the size of the pan -- you want a big one so the squash can cook in a single layer.

When the garlic is toasty, remove it to a bowl, leaving behind as much oil and butter as possible. (I usually find this step a bit of a pain, but it's worth it here to avoid burning the garlic and ruining all that nice flavour in the process.)

Hopefully half an hour has passed by now. If it has, give the zucchini a quick rinse and then pat it dry.

Crank the heat a little higher (6 on my stove) and fry the zucchini for around 10 minutes. (See how it fits in a single layer? Awesome pan!)

Stir now and then, but not too often because you want to give them a chance to brown.

Once they look nice and toasty, squeeze the lime juice into the pan and add the oregano, browned garlic, pepper, and some minced parsley.

Stir that around, taste for salt, and serve up! This makes a nice side dish, or you could make a meal out of it by rolling it up in some tortillas with grated cheese.

Cherry Clafoutis

2011-08-28T04:42:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty sure cherries are my favourite fruit. I could eat them all day just as they are. They certainly don't need to be dressed up to make them special, but once in a while it's fun to turn them into something spectacular. Bring on the clafoutis!

This recipe comes from Earth to Tabe by Jeff Crump and Bettina Schormann. It's a groovy little book with recipes arranged by season and augmented by interesting stories and profiles of farmers and chefs. It's also Canadian, so what more could you ask for, really?

A clafoutis is basically a big pancake with fruit in it based on batter like that used for Yorkshire puddings or our old friend the Dutch Baby. You'll need 1/2 cup of flour, 1/2 cup of sugar, 3 tablespoons of ground almonds, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 4 eggs, 1 1/2 cups of whipping cream, 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract, the zest from one orange and one lemon, and a bowl of cherries. (I ran out of lemons after the lemonade extravaganza the other day, so I subbed in a lime and it worked just fine.)

The first step is to make the batter since it needs to sit in the fridge for a few hours before you use it.

Grind the almonds into flour. I have a coffee grinder that I use for spices that works great for this. Sift through the flour with your fingers and take out any big chunks that are still in there. Don't be too fussy about it since toothsome morsels of almond are a great surprise while you're eating.

Mix the dry ingredients and the wet ones in separate bowls.

Combine.

Then cover and put in the fridge for anywhere from 30 minutes to 12 hours.

When baking time arrives, heat your oven to 350 and get your pans ready. You can make this in a single dish, or as individual little cakes. The book this came from showed a picture of these clafoutis in 8" skillets. That photo was my whole inspiration for doing this dish, but since I wanted to make individual servings I decided to get my fleet of 6" skillets ready for another culinary excursion. If you're using skillets, put a pat of butter in each one and pop them in the heated oven for about 2 minutes to warm up. Swirl the butter around, and then proceed with assembly. You could also use 6 ceramic ramekins here, or a single 3 cup baking dish. Don't bother heating them first, but do bother buttering them up.

While the oven is heating, prepare your cherries. You'll need a cherry pitter to make this bearable. This is not as specialised a tool as it sounds, since you can also use it for olives. (I know, phew!)

If you do one thing carefully in this whole recipe, this should be it. Go slowly with the pitting and make sure the pit pops out of the bottom of each cherry. It is EXTRA nasty to chomp down on one of these things in the finished dish. Cherry pitters are great at removing pits, but they are not great at keeping cherry juice from flying all around your kitchen. I recommend doing this in a bowl in the sink unless you're a fan of cleaning.

When everything is ready, get your batter out of the fridge. Give it a stir and transfer it to something that can pour well.

Put about 8 or 9 cherries in each pan.

Pour the batter over the cherries. You could try and measure it out, but eye balling it seems to work ok for me.

Put them in the oven for about 45 minutes and voila! (The recipe calls for an hour if you use one big 3 cup baking pan and 40 minutes if you go for 6 ramekins.) I moved the pans around before the last 5 minutes to help the tops brown up evenly.

The book recommends you wait 20 minutes before serving -- I'm sure I didn't wait that long, but they do benefit from a bit of time to settle. Serve in the pan if you like or ease them out onto plates. They are great on their own, but a little whipped cream, ice cream, or maybe a sprinkle of icing sugar would all be great. I prefer a more liquid accompaniment, personally.

Enjoy!

Lemonade

2011-08-27T18:09:00.000-07:00

This as actually a recipe for a lemon flavoured syrup as opposed to lemonade per se. I mean, who needs a recipe for lemonade, right? Juice a couple of lemons, put the juice in a glass, add about 3 tablespoons of sugar, fill with water, stir forever, and voila! The purpose of this recipe is to avoid the "stir forever" part, and to get more mileage out of your precious lemons. So onwards!

The basic recipe for this comes from The Joy of Cooking. There is a cool section in there on drinks, and sugar syrups is my favourite part of that section. I found their version to be a little to lean on lemonyness (someone call Oxford!) so I've modified it a little.

A basic sugar syrup calls for two cups of sugar and one cup of water. You just need to add lemon juice to this basic sugar syrup later to make your instant lemonade mix. I'm telling you this now because I've determined (through much trial and error) that the perfect ratio of lemon juice to sugar (for me) is 1 to 1. The recipe in the book calls for 2 parts sugar to one part lemon juice -- this 100% difference tells you there is some leeway here, but if you want to reproduce Joe's Perfect Lemon Syrup, you'll need about 6 lemons, 2 cups of sugar, and a cup of water. And if you're feeling wild and crazy, throw the juice from some limes and/or oranges in there too!

The first thing to do is get the peel off of three of the lemons. Try to remove as little of the white pith as possible. I like to use organic lemons for at least this part in the optimistic hope that they aren't covered in wax and pesticde (they will be covered in mould spores however, so choose your poison; rinse them well regardless).

Juice all the lemons (and an orange or a lime too). Put the juice in the fridge until later. You should have about two cups of juice. If you don't, don't sweat it -- if you're between one and two cups you should be fine. Just remember how much juice you had and see if you like how sweet your lemonade comes out and adjust accordingly next time. (And oh yes, there will be a next time!) Or, if you're a big smarty pants, reduce the amount of sugar and water you use in the next step so that your sugar:lemon juice ratio stays at 1:1.

Ok, now for the sugar. Put two cups (or whatever, see above) of sugar into a sauce pan and add one cup (or whatever, see above too) of water. I am always amazed that two cups of sugar can dissolve in one cup of water. I stop being amazed as soon as I remember how long it takes.

Add your lemon rinds to the sauce pan and heat somewhere between low and medium, stirring occasionally until the sugar dissolves. You are bound to raise the heat as you get frustrated with how long this takes, so start lowish. Like I said, this takes FOREVER. (Ok, half an hour.) Don't be tempted to crank the heat too much, or you'll get a boil over that will leave you and your kitchen sticky til the end of your days.

I judge that my sugar is dissolved when I can see the bottom of the pan fairly clearly. The sugar I use still has some molasses in it, so my mix is more brown than yours will be if you use white sugar. Once the sugar is dissolved, cover and simmer for 5 more minutes.

Now turn off the heat and let your syrup cool.

When the sugar syrup is cool, get your lemon juice out of the fridge and pour it into the sugar syrup. Then get a funnel and some bottles ready to receive your genius creation! (Note: You should probably sterilise your bottles first if you expect this to sit around in the fridge forever. However if that's the case, you probably shouldn't bother making it. My genius way of avoiding this tedious step is to use the stuff up fast.)

I have a cool funnel with a strainer built in, but if you are not so fortunate, you'll need to use a seive to get the lemon rinds and any stray seeds out of your syrup.

Bottle up, and store it in the fridge. I like to use old whisky (or whiskey, depending) bottles for this. I figure they are pretty sterile to start with, and if there happens to be a few drops of booze in the bottom at bottling time, then so much the better. (Which reminds me, this mix is great for Lyncburg Lemonade if you are so inclined.)

To use your syrup, pour a bit in a glass and fill with water. That's it! I go for somewhere between 5 and 10 parts water for each part of syrup (i.e. about one finger of lemon syrup in a 250 ml glass) but try a couple and see what suits your fancy. I find a batch lasts less than a week (a couple of days if it's hot) but it is SO much better than any commercial lemonade preparation I've tried that it is well worth the effort!

Cheers to the lovely lemon!

Save the squash!

2011-08-01T09:44:00.000-07:00

Well, as luck would have it one of my squashes has made it (knock on wood) through the squirrel onslaught. The trouble is that it is in the most ridiculous place, way up in the air on a bean pole. I was certain that if it got too heavy it would break the vines that are keeping it alive, so a little help was called for.

Ashley's Book of Knots to the rescue! This book has every knot ever dreamed up (and then some) so I figured it would be a great place to go for advice on how to make a net. I thought a little hammock would be a great way to keep the squash supported while it grows without risking it rotting away if it sat on a soggy cloth or some other contraption.

Lo' and behold, I was right (about the net part, not about the soggy part -- although I am probably right about that too).

The first step is to cut some string. I used 5 strands (they get folded in half when attached to a lead string, so you get 10 lines in the end). Make them pretty long, because they will get reduced to about a quarter of their length after they are folded over and knotted up.

Tie an anchor line across two supports (I used the picnic table). Then loop each string at the half way point.

Put the loop on the anchor line and feed the loose ends around the anchor and through the loop to make a lark's head type of knot.

Tighten it up (very useful that the camera focused on the patio stones).

And do the same with your other 4 strings.

Make an overhand knot a little way down the second string from the left.

Then take the string to the right and make an overhand knot the other way round so that it goes through the loop of the first knot. It should look like this. (The first one is the toughest!)

Tighten them up, and voila: first knot! Then do the same with the next pair of strings, and continue along the row to the end. When you reach the end, go back the other way, but alternate strands so that your next row of knots is under a space as opposed to being under an existing knot.

Once you run out of string, tie the last row off to another lead string (I guess this should be called an end string), and you're done! This won't win any beauty contests, but it should do the trick.

Then came the massive struggle with the beans, the bean poles, and the squash vines to get the damned thing attached, but it worked and looks pretty cool if you ask me! Now I know how to make a net -- I am sure this will be a useful skill post-Apocalypse for catching mutant shrews and stuff, so I figure I killed two birds with one stone here (provided I can still buy string).

The Ashley Book of Knots is a great reference. I think it would be cool if someone did a blog about it, like Julia and Julia, where they make every knot in the book. They could call it Arthur and Ashley or something. It won't be me though. First, I am not named Arthur, and second there are around 4,000 knots in the book so you'd need a year of 10 knots per day, which strikes me as nuts. I'd be 80 before I got to page 10.

ANYWAY, there you have it! Fingers crossed that the evil squirrels don't find our airborne delicacy!

Potimarron soup, day 150.

2011-07-24T14:11:00.000-07:00

This may take longer than expected. I had some lovely squashes on the way -- nice little bubs all fertilised and ready to go, then I go out in the garden and find...

...this,

and this!!

Freaking squirrels. They are the mosquito of the rodent world. If only they weren't so damned cute.

ANYWAY, my dear squash plants have been chugging along undeterred. In fact, they may take over the garden. Here is one blasting up through one of my bean tee-pees.

Luckily, the squash vines are continuing to set fruit, although they have chosen a few interesting places to try this.

In the tomatoes for one.

Way up in the air for another.

And tucked into the beans for a third.

My hope is the (evil) squirrels will have something else to eat by the time these babies are moving along. Actually, I shouldn't hope that too much because my figs are just starting to set fruit (well, flowers actually -- did I ever tell you that a fig "fruit" is actually just a big unopened flower? Cool, eh?).

See? (They always get my figs.)

Be that as it may, fingers and toes are crossed that at least one or two of these little squashes make it through the rodent onslaught and into the fall when their glorious fate in the soup pot awaits!!

Take care all of you. Here's to good eats, peace, love, and happiness.

(Oh, and if you're wondering what on Earth I'm talking about, the links to this saga are here.) ;)

Righteous 'cue

2011-07-18T16:31:00.000-07:00

I decided to head down to Gananoque on Saturday to check out a bbq joint that I had heard about through some friends. Man, was it ever worth the trip! If you're ever in Gan, or anywhere remotely close for that matter, be sure to stop in at the Pig Iron Barbecue. I met the pit boss Jay Cameron and his crew, and they were kind enough to show me around and talk 'cue with me before they opened. Then I had the best pulled pork sandwich ever, perfect pit beans, sweet slaw, and they even snuck me a slice of their brilliant brisket. I washed it all down with a great beer served in a mason jar, and rode away with my smoke-lust rekindled! (The decor rocks too, btw.)

The restaurant had just been written up in the Kingston Whig Standard, and as I read the article I saw that they had taken some of their inspiration from the Memphis Blues restraunt in Vancouver -- and they just happen to have a cookbook. I decided to pass through Kingston on the way home, stopped at Chapter's just in case, and lo' and behold, they had a freakin' copy! Destiny. I knew what my Sunday would be about then and there!!

The Memphis Blues cookbook is a great combination of story, technique, and recipes. What makes it most useful for the average person is that it gives instructions for smoking on a gas grill in addition to the charcoal instructions. I note though, the gas cooking is at a slightly higher heat so things go a little quicker than on my barrel smoker. Their chicken recipe, for example, is supposed to be done in 2-3 hours -- mine was in the barrel for more like 5-6 (I lost count after the second lemonade...). The other book in the photo is Smoke & Spice and it is my go-to book for smoker recipes (my other go-to book now). I went for their "birds of paradise" a Carribean chicken dish, and I am still in paradise!

If you're using a barrel smoker, you have to get the rig up and running. Check back here for the lighting technique, and back here to see the modifications I made to this puppy so it will work properly. You can also do this on a gas grill by only lighting one side, setting up a chip smoking box, and cooking the food on the unlit side, but since I have no experience with gas (grills, that is) that's all I'm gonna say on that subject -- check out the book if you're keen to give it a go!

I decided to go for two chickens since I wanted some leftovers.

I took them out of the fridge about half an hour before the smoker was ready and rubbed them down with a spice rub. Actually, four spice rubs -- I just kind of mix them up on the birds until they look great. I also put some sprigs of rosemary inside since that could only make them better.

By then the grill had reached about 400, so I shut down the firebox vent. The temp drops when the food goes in, and you want to keep the fire pretty starved so the barrel stays around 200 F.

Put your wood chunks in the firebox just before the birds go in. I used a mix of mesquite and hickory.

Lay the chickens breast side down, close the lid, and leave them alone for an hour. Remember from our ribs cooking that the first hour is critical for smoke penetration, so don't bug them while they're busy getting all delicious in there!

While the birds are smoking away, get your mop sauce ready. This one is from Smoke & Spice and has two tablespoons of orange zest, 3/4 cup of orange juice (two big, juicy ones), 3/4 cup of lime juice (6 juicy ones), half a dozen minced cloves of garlic (I just ran them through a garlic press -- mincing garlic sucks), 3/4 cup of olive oil (pretty easy quantities to remember, eh?), 2 teaspoons of ground cumin, 2 teaspoons of oregano, and 1 teaspoon of salt. (The recipe also called for cilantro, but I don't dig that stuff very much, so I left it out.)

Put all that stuff in a pot and mix it around. Then save about a cup of it for serving, add a cup of water to the pot to top it up, and get the pot out on the smoker to warm up.

When the first hour is over, flip your birds :D

I find it best to use tongs, and pick them up by the tailpipe. Aren't they wonderful already?!

Give them a good dose of mop sauce, close the lid, and settle in to a comfy chair. Keep an eye on the temp (stick to about 200) and mop the birds every half-hour or so.

To keep you company, I highly recommend some John Lee Hooker (The Healer is wonderful), some Creedence (Chronicle!), and a tall glass of Lynchburg lemonade. This was a choice discovery at the back of the Memphis Blues book -- it's just lemonade over ice with a splash of Jack Daniel's thrown in (for every cup of lemonade, use an ounce and a half of Jack). Dee-lish!

Right near the end of my smoke fest, a massive thunderstorm dusted up -- I had to haul the smoker to the edge of the garage for protection (keeping the business end outside, of course). This storm was so big, it completely demolished the stage at Bluesfest while Cheap Trick was playing. Some friends of mine were there and said is was pretty freaky -- luckily no one was killed. Some thunder must have cracked just as I took this picture. BOOM!

ANYWAY, after 5 hours or so, the birds were done. And yes, they WERE birds of paradise! Serve with napkins and don't forget the reserved mop sauce in the fridge like I did. Leftovers have so far been used on sandwiches, and mixed into some leftover spaghetti bolognese (brilliant!). Other plans include nachos, maybe a salad, maybe a pizza, and of course the carcasses will make a brilliant smokey stock.

Here's to you and your 'cue. Wishing Jay and the gang all the best too. Now, I could use another lemonade.

Spanish chicken fricassee

2011-06-27T17:17:00.000-07:00

This recipe hails from one of those Fine Cooking anthologies I keep buying even though I already have all the recipies tucked away in back issues somewhere -- they sure seem handy when you flip through them at the grocery store. This one (77 easy recipes for every night -- not the best subtitle I've ever seen, but whatever) has a couple of nice dishes in it. My favourite by a country mile is this one (it goes by the name garlicky chicken thighs in red pepper sauce, but I like my name way better.)

A fricassee is half way between a saute (which has no sauce added during cooking) and a stew (which is sauce city all the way) -- this is Julia's definition anyway, and I'll take it as gosphel. I love the name since it makes me think back to those heady days of childhood when every Saturday morning some character or other was threatened with being fricasseed on Looney Tunes. (It also makes for great cooking!)

For this recipe you'll need 8 bone in chicken thighs with the skin on (important!). 6 cloves of garlic (I planted all but one yesterday, so I went with one), a few sprigs of fresh thyme (or dried, it works too), about a cup of chicken stock, 3 jarred roasted red peppers (I go for Bulgarian, Hungarian, or Polish -- people who know their red peppers!), 1 or 2 medium potatoes, and a tablespoon of sherry vinegar.

Get some salt and pepper on the skin side of the thighs -- you can season the other sides when they hit the pan.

Heat some olive oil over medium-high for a bit, then add the thighs skin-side down. Do this in two batches so they can brown properly. Turn the heat down to medium, and let them sizzle away for about 3 minutes undisturbed.

While that's going on you can chop your garlic, potatoe(s), and peppers. Go for two spuds if you want to make a heartier meal, and stick with one if you aren't so hungry. Dice them fairly small so they can cook through fast enough.

Flip them over (SO AWESOME!) and sizzle the other side for a minute. Move them to a plate and then do the second batch.

While all this is going on crank your oven up to 425 F, and heat your chicken stock if you happen to keep it in the freezer like me.

Once the thighs are all done, toss the thyme and garlic in the pan and let them sizzle away for a minute or two. (There are people out there who would remove some of the oil at this point -- I'm not one of them, but it's your call.) You can spend a century trying to separate the leaves from the thyme stalks before they go in the pan, or you can do it after everything is cooked like me. Personally, I find it FAR easier to fish them out at the end of cooking, since all the leaves pretty much fall off on their own.

Now you have to get the spuds and peppers and chicken in there. You can do this in one of two ways: put the chicken in and then nestle the other stuff around it, or put the other stuff in a nestle the chicken down into it. I've tried both ways and neither is all that fun -- you will make a mess here no matter how gentle you are with all that nestling.

ANYWAY, get it all in the pan somehow, and fill the empty spaces with chicken stock. Add the tablespoon of vinegar too. Stop pouring when the stock gets to the skin -- you want to keep this out of the liquid so it gets nice and crispy in the oven (and by nice and crispy, I mean delectable beyond belief!).

I should have warned you to use an oven proof pan by now. I went for my 10 inch de Buyer which fits 8 chicken thighs perfectly. Just remember to pop-out the cool little "B" before it goes in the oven -- maybe it can take the heat, but I'm not taking any chances. Another advantage of this cool pan is that it is supposed to help keep your iron levels topped up -- who knew?!

Pop the whole mess in the oven and let it braise away for 30 minutes. Take your creation out of the oven and say "Oh yeah!" I like to serve this over a bed of egg noodles, but it would also be great with rice, or even just some chunks of great bread. (Don't forget to fish out your thyme stalks!)

¡buen provecho!

Garlic, the squash saga, &c...

2011-06-26T17:50:00.000-07:00

Hey there! It's been a while! That gumbo pretty much did me in from its awesomeness, but I'm baaaaack!

This post is a garden one. I hope to post a great chicken fricasee recipe tomorrow if I can squeak it in. But for now, lets hang out with the plants!

The inspiration for this post is this MASSIVE head of garlic I picked up the other day at Natural Food Pantry. It's some kind of French purple garlic (from France, no less), and once I set eyes upon it I knew it must be bought, used for cooking a little, and then planted!

Traditionally, garlic is harvested AND planted on the longest day of the year (or thereabouts, for both). I therefore figured I could plant this one before I ate the rest of it. The first job is to separate the head into cloves. Pick nice solid ones (i.e. un-smushed) that are still covered in paper (I don't know if you have to do this, but I figure the extra layer of protection can only help.)

Then head out in your garden and make a bunch of holes a few inches deep with your rake handle.

Pop the cloves in root side down.

Then cover them up and wait! By October, you should have little shoots poking out of the ground. The trick is remembering where they are. I can't advise you here because I always forget. I put mine in a place that will be over-run with squash soon, but that should be clear once the frosts of fall arrive. Prime time to go -- oh yeah! that's where I planted the garlic!

About a year from now they should look like this. (I know some people remove the curly flowering heads from the top of their garlic stalks, but I'm a devil-may-care kind of guy and just wait to see what happens -- I would also suck as a farmer for this very reason.) Once the tops die down you can dig them up and let them dry for a while before you stick them in your pantry for the winter. Incidentally, the French one I just planted is a soft-neck type -- i.e. crappy for storage -- so I expect I'll have to use it up in the weeks immediately after harvest rather than through the winter as I would with the hard neck types that are shown above. Could be worse though!

On the potimarron squash front (it's day 120 or so) the plants are starting to hit the exponential stage of growth.

Here you can see a shot of the flowers. Squashes have male and female flowers: the male ones (on the left) are on longish stalks (no comment) and the female ones (on the right with the yellow bottom) can be distinguished by the little baby squash shapes they have at the base (these are the ovaries that will develop into the fruit and seeds). Once some bees move pollen from the boy flowers to the girl flowers, we'll be off to the races!

I also decided to harvest a bunch of herbs today: thyme, oregano, and sage -- the main ones I use dried through the winter. They were flowering or on the verge of flowering, so I gave them a haircut to encourage more leaves. I'll wash them up and then take them to work tomorrow to dry on my desk. My office has a level of humidity equivalent to the Gobi Desert, so they dry pretty quick. If you find your herbs go all black before they dry, then they are in an environment that is too humid -- they are fermenting (oxidising) before they dry and basically turning into tea leaves. I've you're not sure, test a couple of stalks to see and go for a drier place if you need to. (I am not a big fan of microwaves or ovens for this job, so you'll have to look elsewhere for advice if you don't have a Gobi Desert office like me!)

Here's a shot of the seeds of my chervil. The winter crop has run to seed, but some of the spring crop is still going. I pull the seedy ones up by the roots and let them dry for seeding again in the fall -- these seeds don't last too long so you have to keep them in rotation. They sure are pretty though!

Finally a look at the lovage flower heads. The plant is too huge to fit in any photograph in its entirety (remember, you can never have not enough lovage!). I like to keep it around because it attracts these little wasps that help keep the nasties out of your garden. It also makes my garden look like a Dr. Seuss book.

Peace through biodiversity!! Take care folks -- pop in tomorrow (I hope!) for a cooooool recipe!

Gumbo

2011-05-29T18:26:00.000-07:00

Oh frabjous day! I was rummaging through a box of magazines yesterday trying to find something which I never found when I came across an old issue of Fine Cooking sandwiched between some fishing mags. I took this to be a sign and decided I'd better take a look. I'm glad I did, because I stumbled across a wonderful article on gumbo by Poppy Tooker (best name EVER!). As you can imagine, gumbo defined my day today.

The opening lines of Poppy's article are pretty clear: "Throughout food-obsessed South Louisiana there is no single dish more revered and debated than gumbo. Everyone loves it, but that is where any consensus regarding the centuries-old, soupy, stewy concoction ends." What this means is that what follows may offend if you have a different view of gumbo, but if it does, you can blame Fine Cooking.

Basically, gumbo is a stew that is thickend with either okra or filé (ground sassafras leaves). My okra looks like this at the moment (i.e. not ready) so the filé version made the most sense for me.

(And wonder of wonders I had a bottle of filé in my pantry! Destiny!!)

For this recipe, you'll need a pound of sausage (andouille is best, but I had to sub chorizo since Piggy Market was fresh out of andouille), some Louisiana-style hot sauce, a chicken, a green pepper, 3 stalks of celery, a big onion (or two small ones), some garlic, a couple of sprigs of thyme, a couple of bay leaves, green onions for garnish, a cup of four, 1/2 cup of bacon (or other, as if!) fat, and 2 litres of chicken stock.

The first step is to pick an appropriate apron, and get some Cajun tunes on (I went for Beausoleil and Buckwheat Zydeco). The next thing to do is get your chicken stock thawing if you keep it in the freezer like me. I warm the containers in hot water and then dump them in a pot to heat up while I get the rest of the recipe going.

The first cooking task is the get the sausage ready. Slice them lengthwise, and then into half moons. Get these frying in a nice big skillet.

Once they're all browned, remove them to a bowl. Then add 1/2 cup of water to the frying pan to deglaze it. Save this liquid for later.

Now for the chicken. The recipe says to cut it into 8 pieces.

I presume these are the 8 pieces it means: two wings, two drumsticks, two breasts, and two thighs. I also used the back, since I had no space in the freezer and figued I may as well use it now.

Get your biggest, baddest Dutch Oven (i.e. the 7 1/2 quart dark orange bad boy) on the burner and heat your fat. I used bacon grease (apparently the Cajuns used bear grease, but I'm all out), you can also use 1/2 cup of vegetable oil if you like.

Brown the chicken in two batches, giving each piece 3-4 minutes per side. (This Dutch oven is the perfect size for browning 1/2 chicken at a time.)

When they're done, add them to the bowl with the sausage (it was all I could do not to stick my face in there and eat it all up!)

While the chicken is browning, prepare your mirepoix. As you know, mirepoix usually consists of carrot, onion, and celery. According to Poppy Tooker, carrots didn't grow well in Southern Louisiana so folks used green pepper instead as the flavour base for their cooking. So chop your pepper, onion, and celery nice and fine for this Cajun version of the universal flavour base.

Once the chicken is all done, you need to prepare a roux. According to Poppy, the roux is the key to this dish, so it pays to do it right. Gradually pour the cup of flour into the fat in the Dutch oven, and mix it to a smooth paste.

If it lumps up like this, add some more oil until it is nice and smooth...

...like this.

Now get ready to stir. And stir. And stir. Until your roux turns a nice caramel colour. (The recipe recommends a fairly high heat and about 8 minutes for this -- I think I'm more old school, since the recipe also says some people used to use lower heat and sit around and stir for about 40 minutes to get a nice brown roux -- which is about exactly how long I was at it.)

Once the roux is brown enough for you, dump the mirepoix and garlic in there and stir it around for awhile. (I have to warn you that in all my years of cooking, I have never smelled a nicer aroma than Cajun mirepoix hitting a brown roux ... it is heaven!)

Once the onions etc. have softened to your satisfaction, get the stew going by adding the chicken stock, the sausage, the chicken, the bay, the tyme, the deglazing liquid from the sausages, and about a litre of water to top up the Dutch oven.

Bring this to the boil, then lower the heat and let it blup away for about 45 minutes.

Do some dishes now.

Once all that's done, get the chicken out of there and let it cool for a bit.

Then use a couple of forks (and massive willpower) to separate the chicken from the bones and skin, and break it into bite-sized pieces (you need the willpower to avoid eating it all right now).

Return the chicken to the pot, stir a little, and GET READY TO EAT! (Season with salt and pepper to taste first -- I added about 2 teaspoons of salt before I hit the sweet spot.)

To serve, pour the stew over about 1/4 cup of cooked rice. Let your diners add Tobasco to taste, and about 1 teaspoon of filé to each bowl. Filé is a thickener (and also adds flavour), but you can't add it to the whole pot, or it will turn into a stringy mess if you have any leftovers and put it in the fridge. Okra is the thickener used for seafood gumbos, and from what I understand you can even put okra and filé in the same gumbo if you like (although there are people out there who may disapprove of this -- like crossing the streams in Ghostbusters). You're also supposed to add the green onions as a garnish at this point, but I totally forgot.

And there you have it, gumbo filé! It's a great dish! Now all I need to do is whip up a jambalya and a crawfish pie, and I'll be ready to have a real party!

Bon appetit, cher!

Omelettes (Big Trouble in Little China style!)

2011-05-17T18:09:00.000-07:00

This is a pretty classic two-egg omelette (with a twist, of course). The great thing about this dish is that it is super easy to customise on the fly (like meatloaf muffins) so that if there are any big likes or dislikes in the crowd you have to feed you can adapt each omelette to each customer. It is possible to dump a gazillion eggs in a bowl, whisk it up, and ladle the eggs out one omelette's worth at a time, but I find it much better to go two eggs at a time -- that gives you more customising room.

The basic ingredients are two eggs (SURPRISE) per omelette, and the rest is up to you. I've shown the spread for one of my favourites: bacon, chile flakes, Egyptian onions fresh from the garden, shiitake mushrooms, salt, pepper, chervil for garnish (also fresh from the garden), and butter for frying.

If bacon is involved in your omelette plan, get that going first. Add a splash of olive oil if the bacon looks a little lean. (Add some anyway, really, it can only make things better -- especially if you also have mushrooms in the plan, since they can soak up an AMAZING amount of fat and, well, we want to soak up as much as we can, really.)

This is one of those "I am frying bacon in olive oil but I really like my shirt" moments when you have to put on an apron. Pick a good one -- suitable for this more-or-less French cooking session.

While the bacon is chugging away, get your other filling ingredients going. All I had to work on here were the mushrooms. Another great thing to put in there is potatoes and onions with cheese. That means your should dice the potatoes and boil them for about 5 mins. Chop the onions while that's going on, and grate the cheese too. Then when the bacon is done, you can drain the potatoes and fry them with the onions in the bacon fat until browned up a little. Then get it all ready for the omelette filling phase.

In any event, once your bacon is done, get it out of the pan and fry up whatever else you want in the remaining fat. I really wanted to use my fresh new wild leeks today. John from work collected a bunch up in Parry Sound and dropped them off at my office today. Sadly, I forgot them in the office fridge in my haste to get the Hell out of there today. :( I will not forget them tomorrow! So, instead it's just bacon and mushrooms tonight.

(Incidentally, you can save your shiitake mushroom tails for soup stock etc. Just pull them off and let them dry on a plate for a week or so. Pop them in a jar and you can throw them into stocks or whatever when the fit takes you.)

Ok, lets roll. Crack two eggs into a bowl, add a splash of water (maybe a tablespoon?) and whatever else you want. Salt and pepper are pretty much givens. Some chile flakes can be fun. A pile of green onions is cool too. This is your first chance to customise -- make the egg wrapper of your choice!

Whip all that around with a fork until it is nicely combined. Then get your omelette pan heating.

My pan of choice is a de Buyer iron pan. This is old school. This is pre-"Better Living Through Chemistry." I don't trust non-stick coatings any farther than I can spit, so those modern no-stick (ok, they came out in the 70s, but whatever) pans are not for me. (By the way, my eldest daughter can't use this expression, since she once won a watermelon seed spitting contest, sending the projectile some 16 feet at the tender age of 8 -- but that's another story.) I also like the workmanship of these, and the heft, and the shape, and the just plain old understated perfection of form and function they seem to exude. (No, I don't work for de Buyer.)

When your mushrooms are this awesome, you should be ready to get the eggs going.

Get a good wad of butter in your heated omelette pan -- don't be shy, this is old-school no-stick remember, and a good layer of butter is key. Let it sizzle until the water evaporates.

Then drop the eggs in.

Dab a spoon around in there for a bit. This helps distribute the eggs and evens them out in the pan. Then let them sit for a few minutes until the top is almost set.

This is a good time to prepare your garnish. I chose chervil for mine. It is like parsley, only the leaves are really small so it doesn't feel like you are eating paper. It also has a nice subtle licorice flavour -- it's great on everything. I don't think you can buy it, but if you get a patch going in your garden you'll probably never be able to get rid of it -- it's one of the best weeds I ever encountered!

By now you're probably saying "Wait a sec. What happened to the Big Trouble in Little China angle?"

Well, dear reader, it is now. You see, in my estimation, the bottom of an omelette gets too brown by the time the top sets, and it doesn't look all that great when you roll it out. My solution is to flip it. This is the no-guts-no-glory moment. This is the time to "Damn the torpedoes" and go "full steam ahead!". This is when you have to channel Jack Burton.

Jack Burton is the main character in Big Trouble in Little China. The relevant bit follows:

Jack: "You know what old Jack Burton always says at a time like this."

Bad Guy: "Who?"

Jack Burton: "JACK BURTON! ME!! Ol' Jack always says, 'What the Hell.'"

So, that's what you have to do. Jiggle the pan. If the omelette moves in one piece, steel your nerves, stand in an appropriate stance, say "What the Hell," and give a quick shake and flick of the wrist and...

Jack Burton: "It's all in the reflexes."

...voila! It will either look like this or it will land all over the stove/floor. Note that this is not at all necessary, you can skip this whole thing and just put your fillings in there without flipping, but when else will you get a chance to run through this whole dialogue? Seriously?!

Ok ... get your custom fillings in there and let the top cook for a second. Keep the filling to the left half of the pan (unless you use cheese, which should be spread all over).

Then slide the omelette onto a plate, and ...

...fold it over at the half-way point. Please excuse the blurry pics and the bubble in the middle -- I attribute this to trying to take a picture in the middle of the folding process.

If you are cooking for a crowd, put the finished omelettes in the oven at the lowest heat while you make the others.

Then garnish with your chervil, add some tomatoes, and if you are lucky, add some of the nice sopressata that Giuseppe gave you at work today. (You may have noticed that there are nice people at my work who give away cool food things. If you don't have this where you work you can a) talk to HR and try and find some people like that or b) follow the sage advice of Max Jackson who at the end of his sports casts on CKWS TV in Kingston always said "If you don't play a sport, be one!" which in this case means "If no one is bringing cool foodie things to work, then do it yourself and get the ball rolling!").

ANYWAY, mangia!

Squash soup day 76 (and some other stuff)

2011-05-14T10:10:00.000-07:00

Greeeeeetings! It's been a while since my last post. This is mostly due to the fact that I was off in Copenhagen for a work thing. If you haven't been there, I highly recommend it! The people are wonderful, the food is great, the beer is brilliant, and the city itself is beautiful. The highlight of the trip for me was the last night when I got caught up in an all night karaoke extravaganza with an Australian statistician and two U.S. Marines at Sam's Bar (this was even more fun that it sounds!).

Be that as it may, the relevant bit of this was that I had to devise an ingenious system to keep all my seedlings alive (one of which is the mythic potimarron squash I've been nuturing). Unfortunately, the weather forecast when I left called for rain the whole week, so I devised my system with this in mind, but of course the sun shone the whole week and it was the hottest stretch of the year so far. Luckily, all the plants made it through some how, so here's a post where they get put in the garden.

Here are the squash seedlings. They came up a few days before I left and have been chugging along merrily. They've been outside ever since the leaves came out, so there is no need to harden them off before they go in the ground.

The first step is to dig a hole about the same size as the pot.

Then pop the plants out of their pot. Just flip the pot upside down, cradling the seedlings between your fingers, and give the bottom a whack. Nice roots, eh?

Pop the root ball in the hole. (I do a lot of popping in the garden.)

And firm it in gently. Voila! Soup's on in 3 months or so!!

If you have dumb birds in your neighbourhood who like to dig up plants for no reason, some sticks are a good idea. Just make a little pile over the seedling to make it difficult for the birds to get in there. If they're lazy and dumb, you should be ok.

I also decided to put my tomatoes in today. Here they are getting laid out to check for spacing etc...

For tomatoes, you want to plant them deep ("up to their necks"). This lets them throw roots out from the buried stem part and helps make them more vigorous. To pull this off you should trim the lower leaves from the seedling. I just pinch them off. I was thinking that it is probably a good idea to do this a few days before you put the plants in so the stem can heal over, but I had this brainwave a little late.

Just pop (see?) your tomato into the deep hole, then...

...fill it in and firm it down a little. Lovely!

And here they all are, nice and cozy and ready for another predicted week of rain. This is a new garden bed, so I think the soil is fertile enough to get these cats going. If it was an older bed, I would have dumped a scoop or two of manure in each hole too. Also, if it is an older bed where there has been trouble with tomato leaf blight, I'd mulch the transplants right now with a good layer of straw or something. Leaf blight gets into the plant when rain splashes the virus up from the soil onto the leaves. Mulch helps keep the splashing from happening and saves your little darlings from a summer of misery.

Elsewhere in the garden, things are humming along nicely. I was particularly impressed by my hop plant. Last summer it was new to the garden and just sat there and pouted the whole time. This year it came up strong and ready to roll! Three cheers for hops!! Speaking of which...

...cheers!

Build a garden bed!

2011-04-26T17:17:00.000-07:00

I decided to add some space to the garden this year. The soil in my backyard is like cement, so a good option is to build raised beds with good earth, and it will gradually break up the hardpan underneath and make for a nice little garden plot.

The first thing to do is stake out some territory. This is good to do a few days in advance so you can see how the sun hits the spot, if you trip over it all the time, and if the lawnmower can get around it. Throw some junk in there while you're at it since it will give the worms something to eat at the bottom of the bed and might help break up some of that concrete on the bottom.

The next step is to build the walls. Lee Valley sells these cool connectors from Sweden that do a great job of holding boards together. They are meant for making stacked planters, but work just fine for one storey efforts too. I used cedar 10 inches wide and one inch thick. Cedar costs a bit more, but it will last forever and you don't have to worry about all that preservative gunk they use to make other woods survive in the great outdoors. The board at the top is a guide to make sure the boards I am attaching are straight.

Essentially, you just bolt up your boards and put them on the ground. Since the metal brackets are only 8 inches long, you have to decide which end of the boards to put them on. I keep them at the bottom, since the earth will settle at the top anyway.

Here's a shot of one on a two-year old bed, and it seems to be doing just fine.

I also hammer in some 3 foot rebar against the wall on each side to help support the walls against the pressure of all that dirt. I'm not sure it is absolutely necessary, but then again I wouldn't know because I always do it. I give them a spray with rust paint first to keep them looking lovely.

Once your bed is laid out and filled with garden debris...

...order your dirt! I used a premium organic blend from Greely Sand and Gravel. It looks like good stuff to me. I got 5 yards, but the 8 foot by 12 foot bed only needed about 4 yards to fill it.Can't hurt to have extra dirt though, and as you know, I'm a too-much-is-better-than-too-little kind of guy. (Note, the beer and radio are vital accessories for this work.)

One important point is to not bolt the whole thing together at the start. Leave one bracket unattached so you can open the door for your wheelbarrow.

Speaking of wheelbarrows, I had THE most spectacular wipe-out of my gardening career on load number 34.

There I was, happily chugging away on the project when...

...all of a sudden the stupid piece of wood at the front of the wheelbarrow dug into the ground. (I think this is the design flaw of the century, nay! of the UNIVERSE!)

So I ended up flying right over the wheelbarrow (ass over tea kettle is the proper term, I think).

And landed somewhere, somehow in such a way that I only got a wee scratch. Some people out there may think that the beer contributed to this wipe-out, but I am positive that it saved my life and kept me all bendable like Gumby so that I didn't get hurt on impact. That's my story, anyway, and I'm sticking to it. I thought this whole thing was pretty hilarious -- Americas Funniest Home Videos worthy for sure. Sadly (maybe not, actually), no one was filming this miracle so it has been brought to you via paper and a Sharpie.

ANYWAY, pile the dirt nice and high. You need to keep the door area clear so you can close it and bolt things together so it's good to pile it up and rake it back into that empty space at the end. Once you think you have enough dirt in there, bolt the door closed, hammer in the last piece of rebar, and start raking.

Go for a walk on the garden once you've done the initial raking to pack things down a little, and ...

volia! Mission accomplished! Ninety-six square feet of total fun! I put a wee plant in there right away in the top corner for luck -- you know, like putting a penny in a wallet when you give it to someone. Now you're off to the races! Get plantin'! (And watch out for bumps!)

Potimarron squash soup: Day 55

2011-04-22T11:22:00.000-07:00

Well, it`s been a while since this recipe started. Today, I decided to plant the squash seeds.

In the photo, you can see some Red Kuri squash seeds (in the middle) and some Potimarron seeds from two different sources on either side. Guess what? I don`t think they`re the same (call me crazy!). You may recall that there was some controversy over this whole thing, and that I planned to plant both `just to see.` Given the clear difference between the seeds, I think it`s safe to say that there is no need to use up any precious garden space on the Red Kuri seeds I was sold. I want to do this soup right!

We`ve had a miserable (i.e. real) spring this year (it usually goes from winter to summer in about 36 hours with the odd snow thrown in after just for fun). This means that the garden won`t be ready for squashes until the traditional May 24th long weekend `GET EVERYTHING IN THE GARDEN RIGHT NOW OR FOREVER HOLD YOUR PEACE!` event that we Southern Ontarians are used to. But, it is still a great time to get a head start. Seeds subjected to the garden striaght away will be mowed down by every predator imaginable, and unless they`re tough (like radishes) you can kiss them goodbye as soon as you plant them. Giving them a few weeks in pots will help get them through the tender first days and leave you with lots of extra leaves to feed the slugs etc. and keep the plants growing too when you finally plant them out.

All you have to do is fill some pots with dirt (I don`t want to have to move the squash seedlings to larger pots later, so I use 4 inch pots right at the start), water the dirt, and poke some seeds in there (push them down about 1 inch).

Then carefully water the pots again so that the dirt landslides over your seeds and covers them gently.

Now get the pots into a warm place and ... wait....

If it`s warm and sunny outside, get them into real sunshine as soon as they sprout. Keep them away from frost and cold, but the more sun and fresh air they get from now until planting-out the better.

Happy Earth Day folks! Dig, grow, and be merry! (And have some beers too!)

Pastitsio!

2011-04-16T14:46:00.000-07:00

This recipe comes from the Greece issue of Saveur. This, along with the Roman issue are among the biggest home run issues of cooking magazines that I have ever come across. Funnily enough, I almost didn't read most of the magazine. When I got it, I screeched to a halt at the Chicken Galliano recipe on page 28 -- there was still almost 100 pages of awesomeness to go when I finally got around to flipping through the rest of it.

Pastitsio is sometimes referred to as Greek Lasagne -- a name which I don't think really does it justice, since it is brilliant in it's own right and needs no comparison. It is kinda like lasagne though.

The basic steps are to make a meat sauce (this can be done a day or so in advance if you want), then you cook up some noodles, layer the noodles and meat sauce, coat the whole thing in a creamy bechamel, bake it up and delve into culinary heaven when it's ready! Huzzah!

For the meat sauce, you'll need a pound of ground meat (I used pork, but beef and veal are supposed to be ok too), 3 oz. of dry-cured sausage like chorizo or something (I get cool ones from a local Italian deli called Nicastro's), 2 cups of crushed tomatoes (I used a whole 796 ml can), 1 green pepper (the recipe says 2, but this puppy was HUGE!), 2 yellow onions (again, I had a huge one, so went with one), 1/3 cup of red wine, 1/4 teaspoon of chile flakes, 2 bay leaves, and a two-inch stick of cinnamon (mine were kinda skinny so I went with two). I'm good at following recipes, eh?

I chose a nice Spanish wine called Sange de toro (bull`s blood!). The cool thing about the kind I get is that it comes with a little plastic bull on the bottle. You may notice the bottle has been dipped-into in the ingredients photo -- this reminds me to give you a little advice: pour your 1/3 cup of wine into a measuring cup now before you drink it all.

This bull is a great opportunity to make a bunch of lame jokes the whole time you cook supper. You can say `What is all this bull?!`and stuff like that over and over again. You can also do the whole Bugs Bunny schtick with `What a gulli-bull!` and `What a nin-cow-poop!` You know, work it! It`s way easier to be hilarious than you think.

ANYWAY, finely chop your onion and bell pepper and saute them for awhile. The recipe says 10 minutes, but I did mine for more like 20 -- number 2 kid doesn`t like onions, so I like to make them really soft.

While that`s going on, chop your chorizo. Make the pieces pretty small, since they will add great flavour throughout the whole dish and you want to make sure there is enough to get around.

When the onions and peppers are good, slide them out of the pan (the recipe says to use a slotted spoon -- good luck with that, I just dumped it). Then get your sausage and ground meat in there, and brown them for about 10 minutes.

When that`s all nice and browned, add the onions and peppers, the crushed tomatoes, the wine, the chile flakes, the cinnamon stick(s), and the bay leaves. Bring that to a boil, then lower the heat and let it simmer away for about 15 minutes.

When the sauce is nice and thick, turn off the heat and season with salt, pepper, and the ingredient I forgot to mention at the start: some grated nutmeg. Remember my cool nutmeg grater?

Ok, now on to phase two: noodles, bechamel, assembly and baking. You can stop here and do the rest another day, just remember to heat the sauce again to make sure it will spread out easily when you go to assemble the casserole.

For this stage, you`ll need 1/2 cup of butter (the recipe says 8 tablespoons -- I have no idea how they expect you to measure it that way), 1 cup of flour, a whole litre of milk, 1 cup of grated parmesean, and 3 eggs. You`ll also need salt and pepper and a little nutmeg to season the bechamel.

Start by melting the butter. Use a sauce pan because we`re making buckets of bechamel. You may as well heat your oven now too -- fire it up to 350F.

Gradually whisk the flour into the butter, stirring with each addition until it starts to clump up too much for the whisk to handle it.

I wasn`t able to get the whole cup of flour worked into the butter at this point, so I had to start adding milk to make it more fluid and able to accept more flour.

Just keep working in the milk and any remaining flour bit by bit until you have a nice smooth sauce. Let this blup away for around 10 minutes, whisking it every now and then.

While that`s going on, you can get your noodles on the boil -- you need a pound of noodles. The recipe calls Greek macaroni -- I have no idea where to get that, so I went for some awesome Rustichella d`abruzzo noodles called casareccia -- they look like ziti sliced down one side. The main thing here is to not cook the noodles all the way through -- they`re headed into a sauce and then the oven for an hour, so they will mush-up too much if you cook them all the way. The casareccia is supposed to be done in 8-10 mins, I let them boil for 7 and it worked fine.

By now, your bechamel should be ready. Take it off the heat, and mix in 3/4 cup of parmesan. Then whisk in the yolks from the three eggs. When you separate the eggs, keep the whites since you`re supposed to whisk those up and mix them with the cooked noodles and the remaining cheese. I found the egg whites on the counter when I was about to put the casserole in the oven, so I clearly forgot that part.

Ok! Build your casserole: you need a 9x13 inch pan for this. Put down a layer of noodles (noodles mixed with egg white and cheese if you remembered to do it), then add the meat sauce (use a spoon to put it in so it doesn`t blast the layer of noodles out of the way when you pour it in), then add another layer of noodles. How do you like my awesome pan? My bro`and his wife got it for me for Christmas. Wolfgang Puck no-less. Cast iron too! So awesome!!

Pour the bechamel on top, and if you forgot to do the egg white thing with the noodles, you may as well sprinkle the reserved parmesan on top of that. This looks like a pretty full pan, and I was a little worried that it would blow over the edge in the oven. The bechamel didn`t puff up much though, so it worked-out just fine.

Let the top brown for an hour, haul it outta there, and eat up! See the vote of approval? It was really, really, good. Watch out though -- this casserole holds the heat so if you take a big mouthful right off the bat, you`re history (you`re supposed to let it cool for 20 minutes before serving -- good luck).

Καλή όρεξη! (Kalí óreksi!)

First harvest!

2011-04-14T08:36:00.000-07:00

Here is the first harvest form my garden for 2011! This is horseradish. I had to thin the patch out since it was threatening to take over the world, and figured I might as well use some of the clump that I dug up. (I also shipped off a big clump to John at work, so it can now take over his garden too.) My plan is to wrap these up and keep them in the fridge until I need a little zing on a sandwich (mmmm....roast beef!) or in a salad, or wherever else I can dream up. I left the tops on because I figure they will stay alive the whole time, and I can just stick whatever is left in the garden if I decide I want more. (You can not kill this stuff no matter how hard you try -- it`s tougher than dandelions ... and that`s saying something.)

These roots will get funky on cut surfaces that are exposed to air, so don't peel it until you need some, then just grate up a little chunk (prepare to cry! it`s worse than onions by a mile) and carry on. If you have to wait between peeling and preparing them, just dunk them in a bowl of water until you have time to attend to them.

I am planning a stellar roast beef sandwich on caraway rye from Rideau bakery. I`ll add some romaine lettuce, a couple of slices of tomato, a bit of red onion, maybe a little chutney, probably some mustard, and a little mayo (laced with my firey friend above, of course!).

This may call for a beer too.

Mmmm...maybe I`ll toast the bread. Wow.

My next post should be a recipe -- it`s been a while! I am planning to make a Greek casserole called Pastitsio. So stay tuned! (Unless it fails miserably, in which case I may just make another sandwich.)

Spring has sprung!

2011-04-09T20:17:00.000-07:00

What a difference a week makes! I had a quick trip to NYC for work last week, and returned to find the earth warm, the snow gone, and my belly two sizes larger thanks to McSorley`s burgers and beer. :D

A sure fire sign of spring is that the rhubarb has finally erupted. Everything else will soon be on it`s way.

Another sign of spring is that it is nice to drink beer while working in the yard. Actually, I enjoy drinking beer in the yard any time of year, but still. Anyway, I dug into the cellar and came out with some Bog Water. Sadly, it was my last bottle. Happily, it was a big one!

Today was a quick blitz in the garden to get things going. The time between ice-out and full blown summer is about 30 seconds in Ottawa, so if you want to grow any cool weather crops you have to get them in the ground now.

I also plan to add a new garden bed to the collection this year -- I need space for all those freakin` squashes. I`ve marked out the space with bamboo poles. This is important so you can test if the lawnmower fits between it and the other obstacles in the yard. If the lawn mower doesn`t fit, then move it because you will have no end of misery otherwise.

Incidentally, a new garden bed is a great way to get rid of all the weeds and other crap that you didn`t deal with in the fall (because you were, like me, lazy). Just rake it all up into the space, and when you build the walls and add the dirt it will magically disappear! Genius! (I`ll post the building process another day -- once they deliver the 5 yards of dirt I need!)

Today I planted favas and peas, and also put in some arugula, radishes, shallots, turnips, and a bit of lettuce. I`ve posted how to do this before, but a quick review:`

Use the end of your rake handle to make `drills` for the seeds. The drills should be about two seeds deep. Put the seeds in and pull the soil over them with the back of the rake.

Remember to tamp them in with the flat side (this helps keep them from washing away in the rain, and ensures good contact with the soil). It`s also good to mark the rows with sticks before you do this so you remember you put something there.

And that`s it. You can water them in if it`s super dry, but we`re expecting rain later in the week and the soil is still pretty moist, so I didn`t bother. This is also the best time of year to get grass and other nasties out of your garden before they take over. They will still take over, but at least things will look nice for a few days.

Peas, by the way, are lovely if you look at them closely. You can tell the sweet tasting peas by their shape. Sweet ones shrivel-up as they dry -- something to do with the sugars in them. These are Dwarf Grey Sugar peas -- dented and sweet. They have nice flowers too.

I found one of those groovy fuzzy caterpillars today. I don`t know off hand what these turn into, but they sure are neat.

I was planning to do more work tomorrow, but it is supposed to be sunny. And warm. And not windy. And since I got my best mechanical friend back today, I may have to take the opportunity to stretch our legs and enjoy the glorious day. In the meantime, happy gardening to you all. Vroooooooom!

In the garden? Almost!

2011-03-27T16:52:00.000-07:00

I had a peek back to my blog entries from around this time last year. Oddly enough I made oat pancakes about a year ago, I also made them this morning, and haven't made them once in between. Weird. I was also thinking that a whisky sour would be a nice way to finish the eve, and lo' and behold, I posted that the same day. Even weirder. (Although I admit, I have made a few of those since. Just sayin'.)

One thing I did not do this year was go dig in the garden. It's still frozen solid. Last year about this time I was planting spuds...

...here's what that spud patch looks like today. I did however get a little gardening in. The girls helped me get the tomatoes started. I do them the same way I do peppers -- i.e. I germinate them in a warm place first, and then pot them on. We started 18 varieties -- I have space for maybe 4, but that's the kind of guy I am (some might say stupid, but I prefer enthusiastic!)

Speaking of peppers, there is a little encouragement from the mite infestation zone. Some of the poor wee souls seem to be coming through alive (fingers crossed) -- the appearance of some true leaves on this one is a good sign.

Although the poor blighters are much farther behind the plants that didn't get munched.

I'll also be starting the cole crops this week (cabbage, kale, and that crowd), and in a couple of weeks some onions and maybe a little chard. This kind of encouragement is helpful this time of year while the icy wind outside howls and threatens to put your fires out. Now, where did I put those lemons...

Bummer!

2011-03-23T16:39:00.000-07:00

It`s a drag when you spend forever and mess up a million dishes to make a recipe that just doesn`t turn your crank. Even worse if you were super excited about it!

I got a new cookbook the other day called Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi. It`s a beautiful and inspiring book -- the kind I had to stop dog-earing because I was dog-earing every page (which is a little pointless, and makes the book fatter and hard to close properly). I was attracted to it because it`s vegetarian, it got a nifty review in a magazine I trust, and, well, as you may have noticed, I could probably benefit from a few more meatless meals in my repertoire.

ANYWAY, within seconds of leafing through the pages I came across a recipe for Leek Fritters. I happen to like fried stuff. I love leeks. I had leeks in the fridge! Nice ones too!! So, faster than you could say "Joe, make those darn leek fritters!" I was off to the kitchen. The recipe turned out great, looked lovely, all the timings and instructions were spot on, but...

...then I tasted them. And they had THAT taste. If you`ve ever been to a vegetarian restaurant, you know THAT taste because 95% of the stuff there tastes that way. It`s the "I think I`m curry" taste. (Ok, maybe I`ve only ever gone to crappy vegetarian restaurants, but I`m batting 1,000 on this.) Now don`t get me wrong. I love cumin and coriander, and I`ve made curries that have stunk-up the house for over a week (and loved it! Not everyone did, mind you, but I sure did!) but the whole combo just didn`t work for me with the leeks. So, guess what? I`m gonna try again and tweak the recipe a bit and see if I can get something a little more to my liking. I'll post the details then.

I don`t see this as a failure or anything. Cooking is all about learning by doing, and the cookbook did it`s job by igniting my interest and getting me moving (it`s rare that I cook something from a book within a few minutes of opening it). And, for all I know, this is the only recipe in the whole book with cumin and coriander in it. I hope so. :D

The plot thickens.

2011-03-23T16:13:00.000-07:00

You may recall that I'm planning to make this squash soup. I'm still about 5 weeks away from planting the squash seeds, but the controversy over which squash I'm going to grow continues to swirl. I got a question today from a kind gardener asking me to be sure to post the results of which squash is which, since they are keen to grow it too. The choice, in case you forgot (!), is between Potimarron and Red Kuri.

Now, I had put my money on the Seed Saver's Exchange Potimarron squash based on their description of its origin and flavour. I figured Red Kuri was out since some of the pictures I had seen of them looked a little different (the kuris were more squat and less pear shaped.) However, given that I still have 5 weeks before planting, I figured I'd investigate a little further and, lo' and behold, there is a Wiki on Red Kuri Squash. In the wiki, they say Red Kuri has a chestnut flavour, and that kuri even means chestnut in Japanese. Google translate wouldn't confirm this, since it just translated the Japanese characters into an English spelling of a Japanese word -- i.e. I got kuri back. But, if you do detect language, you discover that kuri means "who" in Latvian. So that doesn't get you very far either.

ANYWAY, the only way to work this out for sure is to grow the Red Kuri and the Potimarron seeds I have and see if they are different in appearance and/or taste. This won't settle anything though, since if they are different, I may have just gotten some bum seeds from a misinformed seed merchant.

This has happend to me on several occasions. The most classic example is my attempt to buy some anasazi bean seeds. I've received about 10 different "anasazi" beans (4 are shown in the picture -- the others are off in dusty corners somewhere). The point is, people may think they are selling you the right thing, but they may be out in left field too. (The one on the left is the right one.) All this to say, I'll grow my squash, see what happens, and may know a little more when all is said and done (and tasted!). Or, I may not.

Incidentally, if you want to get anasazi beans, the folks at Purcell Mountain farms have them, but they sell them for cooking. They also have a "®" symbol stuck to the name, so I presume they don't want you to grow theirs. I thought this bean had been discovered in a cave and was a thousand years old or something, so I was surprised to see the "®". Clearly I must be out to lunch too. Mmmm... lunch.

Onwards!

Is cooking art?

2011-03-17T17:02:00.000-07:00

Fasten your seat belts for a non-standard post. No pictures! No recipe! Just a little rumination -- rumination without the cud, thank heavens (and if you think it's all cud, then please accept my apology).

I just made the perfect pizza.

This got me to thinking that cooking is the most ephemeral of all arts. Sometimes it's a utilitarian process -- we need to eat so we cook. Just like other art forms can be utilitarian. We need a house so we build it. We want some colour so we paint a wall. It is silent, so we hum.

But sometimes, something more sneaks into the utilitarian aspect. A building is made beautiful. Paint forms an image. A melody is set loose.

My pizza was like that today.

Food touches several senses: Sight, Sound, Touch, Smell, and Taste. Some of these are common to other art forms, but we get more dimensions from food -- namely smell, and taste. These things touch the very core of what it is to be human. Remember the M*A*S*H* episode when Charles (I think) became obsessed with death, and he thought he was about to discover the essence of it all, and the dying soldier he was speaking to said "I smell bread"?

My pizza today was beyond utilitarian. The crust had a perfect crunch (touch and sound). The smell was a combination of smoke, aromatics (oregano and rosemary), and something I can only call thickness (from the fats in the olive oil, bacon, and cheese). The taste had other dimensions of saltiness, warmth, and spice. It was hot from the oven. It looked wonderful. And it was gone.

So it was ephemeral. It was designed to stimulate, then disappear. I may never make such a perfect pizza. I may never hit that note again. It's like a song that could never be sung again. Like a painting set alight the moment it was finished. Like a firework (if I may borrow from Katy Perry).

Then again, I may make a better one someday.

So my friends, cook and revel in the now. Eat, drink, be merry, and enjoy this day.

(Yes, it's St. Patrick's Day, and yes I had a beer or two, but still!)

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go listen to some of my favourite tunes and look at some of my favourite paintings, and maybe ruminate a little more....

Peppers from seed ... part 3

2011-03-13T16:13:00.000-07:00

Well, there was a minor disaster in the pepper patch this week. I noticed something was strange several days ago when a pot of pepper seedlings started to decline. I figured it might be due to bad seed or a virus or something, but then the malady started to spread to other pots.

Here's a typical specimen. The seed leaves started to shrivel and then fall right off. Once it started moving to other pots, I figured it must be something in the soil or a bug that was hanging out it the other plants I have in the basement. My money is on spider mites, but who knows. I gave the seedlings I have a blast of insecticidal soap (not great for the poor things when they're this small, but there's not much choice at this point) and put the sickly ones in quarantine. I also got another batch of seeds on the go as backup (which I'll grow in another area if this problem continues). This is one good reason to start pepper seeds extra early so there's still time to deal with a disaster like this. It also underlines the old bit of garden wisdom: "never plant all your seeds." (Until you only have 1 left, I suppose.)

ANYWAY, this post is supposed to be about potting the seedlings on and some of them are still in fine shape, so I'll 'splain that process. The idea is to gently move the seedlings out of the nursery container and into a larger one where they can grow until it's time to plant them out (about 10 weeks from now). You don't want to start them out in the larger container because the soil is likely to get all compacted and gross before the roots can colonise it properly. So you start in a shallow container or flat, and then move up to the big leagues once you have some good roots. (See part 1 and part 2 of this saga for more info if you like.)

First, get some pots ready. It's good to get the soil watered outside since it is super messy. Use warm water so the pots are still nice and warm for your seedlings when you bring them back in.

Make a decent sized hole in each pot. A butter knife works great for this (as long as no one catches you) because you want to slice down into the pot rather than smush your way down -- I have some funky Japanese tweezers with a flat paddle on one end that keep me out of the cutlery drawer.

Next ease the seedlings out of the pot. Wedge your knife or whatever down one side and lift out as gently as you can. I like to do this operation while the seedlings are young, since there isn't a lot of leaf area, and a shock to the roots is not a huge ordeal. The disadvantage is that the seedlings don't have much in the way of engines (i.e. leaves) to get back on track so you need to be extra nice to them.

As you can see, the seedlings have been busy underground even though not much activity was visible above the soil. Keep as much of the soil attached as you can to minimise the shock to your little friends.

Ease the root ball into the hole you made. Be as gentle as possible. No shoving! If you need to hold the plant, hold it by a leaf rather than the stem (it's too easy to crush the stem and kill the poor thing). Hold the leaf while you water the roots into place.

Don't tamp the soil down or anything, just water the pot carefully and the soil will settle in around the roots. See?

Get your babies back under the lights, and wait for spring! (And watch out for those nasty mites!)

Happy gardening!

Meatloaf muffins, custom meatloaf, or genius slider brainwave (you call it!)

2011-03-05T18:42:00.000-08:00

How's that for a non-commital title? This recipe is based on something I came across on the website of Canadian Living, or Chatelaine, or some other magazine's website that men aren't supposed to read. I check these things out now and then because it's good to know what the other side is thinking (or what they want you to think they are thinking) and there are cool recipes sometimes (or they just pop-up on Google -- I can't remember because I am a man).

ANYWAY, this idea is genius and I took it to a slightly higher level with some extra twists inspired by complaints/demands/I-mean-kind-suggestions from my daughters. The basic idea of the recipe is to make meatloaf in a muffin tin so that you get individual servings without having to try and slice the damn thing. The genius of this is that it means you can customise each of those servings so that everyone's (everyone minus any vegetarians, that is) preferences can be taken into account. So hang-on, and lets have some fun!

The basic recipe calls for: a pound of ground beef, an egg, 1/2 cup of crumbled crackers, 1/4 cup of ketchup (any recipe with ketchup in it is borderline in the ``real-recipe`` department, but trust me), 1 tablespoon of mustard, 1 teaspoon of Worchestershire sauce, some crumbled oregano (honest officer, it's oregano), some salt, some pepper, a carrot, half an onion, and a couple of cloves of garlic. It sounds like a lot of stuff (and it is) but the assembly is pretty easy (so please trust me a little more!).

The first thing to do is finely chop your onion, grate the carrot, mince the garlic, and get it all sauteing over medium heat in a splash of olive oil. The idea is to gently soften it all up.

While that's going on, put the ground beef, crackers, egg, oregano, pepper, salt, ketchup, Worstershire, and mustard in a bowl. This is the "base" that everyone (except the vegetarians) can agree on.

Mush that around for a bit, and then take out a palm sized piece and...

... pop it into a muffin tin and tamp it down a little. My youngest daughter can detect an onion at 50 paces, so I do two "muffins" before I put the onion/carrot/garlic mixture in with the beef.

After the first two no-onion versions are done, I add the carrot/onion/garlic saute and mix that in and make the rest of the meat muffins. I decided to make a couple of bacon-wrapped versions too.

This idea came from the latest Fine Cooking (number 109) which has bacon-wrapped meatloaf on the cover, and...

...an unbelievably awesome meatloaf spread inside. Buy it for inspiration! It's genius!!

(If you bought your bacon in a slab from Piggy Market -- and you should! -- you`ll need to dig out your MAC razorblade-that-masquerades-as-a-kinfe to slice it thin enough.)

Now, my oldest daughter likes the onions and carrots, but doesn`t like the ketchup topping called for in the recipe, so here is another way to customise. Top some of the muffins with ketchup, some with nothing, put hot Russian mustard on some if you like, or Tobasco, or BBQ sauce, whatever. The options are endless!! See how great this is?! (I`ll leave it to you to figure out how to keep track of what`s what.)

I also decided to try and make a couple of small patties. I had this brainwave today while chatting with Little My at Loblaws. I thought it would be a great way to make little slider patties (like 24 of them all at once!). You could bake up some biscuits and make mini-burgers. If you tried this stunt in a frying pan, it would be Hell, but this way they all finish at the same time and don`t fall apart (and can be customised!!).

I should have asked you to heat the oven to 350 earlier, so do it now if you didn`t read the whole recipe before starting.

Pop the muffin tin into the oven for 35 minutes (or until each meat muffin registers 170 F in the centre -- classic disclaimer). It`s a good idea to put a baking try under the muffin tin if you`re not fond of grease fires. The recipe says to grease the muffin tin first, but seriously if you have any kind of decent beef I don`t think this is necessary.

Remove from the oven, marvel at your adaptable and delicious creations and gently take them out of the muffin tin. Tongs work great for the muffins, but a spoon is better for the more delicate sliders. (The only drag about this recipe is that you have to clean the damn muffin tin -- but trust me, it`s worth it!)

Serve with rice and steamed broccoli (or make those little burgers I am dreaming of) and enjoy!

Peace to y`all!

Potimarron squash soup

2011-02-26T11:46:00.000-08:00

I came across this recipe in Around My French Table by Dorie Greenspan -- you know, the book with the elf on the spine that keeps startling me. I was instantly captivated, and set out to make it as soon as possible. Since I was not sure I could source the Red Kuri squash it calls for locally, I set out to order some seeds and grow my own (this is one of those long-term recipes). I found a batch at West Coast Seeds, and they arrived a week or so ago.

I thought I was all set until yesterday when my Seed Savers Exchange catalogue showed up in the mail. While I was flipping through it, I came across a squash called potimarron, and I knew that this is what is really called for in the squash soup. Dorie suggests that Red Kuri and potimarron are the same thing, but the picture was nothing like any Red Kuri squash I'd ever seen. As the president said in The Fifth Element, ``General, I have a doubt.``

So naturally, today I ordered another batch of seeds. I may grow both, but my money is on the potimarron since SSE notes that it is a chestnut flavoured pumpkin (hence the name: marron = chestnut) which is just the way Dorie describes the one called for in her recipe. I should have my seeds in a couple of weeks.

I`ll keep you posted on the progress. It should be about 6 months from now that I finally make the soup, but there are a few steps between now and then. I know I`ve mentioned how I like recipes that start along the lines of ``On day one...,`` but this is on the verge of ridiculous. Welcome to day one, anyway!

Kimchi!

2011-02-20T15:23:00.000-08:00

Kimchi is a Korean fermented pickle. Pickling is an ancient way of preserving food, but it also creates new flavours in the process. Modern pickling relies on vinegar to produce an acidic solution that preserves food. In the old days before you could just head to the store and buy buckets of vinegar, you had to find a way to create an acidic solution from scratch. Kimchi belongs to the latter class of pickling. Essentially, you douse your vegetable with salt to keep most of the food-spoiling nasties at bay, and then let lactic acid bacteria kick into gear (they can take the salt, it seems) so they can produce the food preserving acids for you. The brine that swirls around in this pickling soup adds all kinds of nice flavours to the finished dish.

This recipe is for paechu (nappa cabbage) kimchi, and comes from the Momofuku cookbook by David Chang and Peter Meehan. Momofuku is a Japanese word that I don't think they ever translate for us (hopefully it means something much different from what it sounds like in English), and is the name of a group of restaurants in New York City. There's a lot of funky stuff in this cookbook, but this is the first dish I've gotten around to trying. (I love the wood grain cover, no matter what's inside!) I'm supposed to be in the Big Apple in April, so I'll be sure to pop in and report back (if I can get a seat!).

Phase one of the dish is salting the cabbage. You'll need 2 tablespoons of kosher or sea salt, a cabbage (surprise!), and 2 tablespoons of sugar.

Cut the cabbage in half lengthwise, then cut each half crosswise into slices about an inch wide. (Chuck any nasty outer leaves first.)

Mix the chopped cabbage with the salt and sugar.

Then cover the cabbage and pop it in the fridge for a day (you may have to move some beers around). If you use a lid that's a little loose like I did here (pot lid on an unrelated bowl), your fridge will get really smelly (which explains why those Korean farmers in that M*A*S*H* episode were burying their kimchi pots out in a field -- ok, probably they wanted to keep it cool, but I'm sure the stinky factor was part of the whole decision tree).

The next day, you need to prepare your pickling brine. You need 1/2 cup of sugar, 1/2 cup of Korean chile powder (they only seem to sell 10 pound bags of the stuff around here -- impressive, but impractical -- so I went for chile flakes), 1/4 cup of fish sauce, 1/4 cup of light soy sauce, and 2 teaspoons of jarred salted shrimp (I didn't have any of these and couldn't find them either, so I went for a handful of dried fish flakes that I had kicking around from some failed attempt to get into Japanese cooking). You'll also need to add to this 20 minced garlic cloves (!), 20 slices of fresh ginger, 1/2 cup of one-inch scallion pieces, and 1/2 cup of grated carrot.

Mix all that gunk in a bowl -- is should be quite soupy, so add a bit of water if it seems too thick to mix easily (I didn't need to add any water to my batch).

Take the cabbage out of the fridge and drain it. Then mix it with your brine and put it in a container (I recommend one with a good lid). Pop it in the fridge and ... wait. You can dig in after 24 hours, but according to Chang and Co. it is better after a week, best at two weeks, good for another two weeks, but then gets "incrementally stronger and funkier" after that -- you've been warned.

Here's what my batch looked like after 3 days. (Didn't I tell you that I love recipes that start: "On day one..."?)

Serve on the side with (or in!) a sandwich, put it on scrambled eggs, use it in the classic Korean dish beef bulgogi (marinated fried flank steak that you eat like a burrito only you use lettuce instead of tortillas and coconut rice instead of cheese -- yum! -- and nothing like a burrito, in retrospect), or eat it straight up. It's brilliant. You get mowed down by the garlic in the first second, then the saltiness hits before you get the one-two punch of the chiles and the fish flavour, then the heat reaches a crecendo and you settle into a garlic afterburn that will last for the next 24 hours at least. God knows what happens next. Just don't plan any long road trips with people with whom you want to remain friends. (Paula, I think you have an inside joke running with some buddies along this line -- I'll leave it to you to decide how much fun you want to have here!)

Kimchi rocks! Peace. Out.

Chicken Divan Casserole

2011-02-16T17:53:00.000-08:00

I'm baaaaack! My 4 hour computer repair is finally done (two weeks later). Time to get that backlog of recipe pictures off of my camera! I hope I didn't leave anyone stranded with their pepper seeds during the blackout. More seed starting coming in a little while, but for now, let's eat!

This recipe comes from Saveur 98. I dug the magazine out of my "to read" pile (and am a little embarassed that number 98 was issued in December 2006 -- it's a big pile). It sure is a nice issue though, and this feature on casseroles is the star of the show. It is a detialed article with several casserole classics (many of which you can snag straight from the Saveur website! BONUS!). It even has a nice discussion of Corning Ware (who knew it also makes great nose cones for guided missiles?!). Finally, it documents the rise and fall of the casserole empire (which we are told was conquered by T.V. dinners and Hamburgur Helper). Great stuff! A classic!

ANYWAY, here we are at Chicken Divan, named for a New York City restaurant called Divan Parisien where it was a specialty. You'll need two chicken breast halves, a head of broccoli, about 5 tablespoons of butter, 1/4 cup of flour, a cup of chicken stock, a cup of milk, a splash of sherry (ok, 3 tablespoons -- and a bit more for tasting), some nutmeg, about 1/2 cup of grated parm, 1 cup of slivered almonds, and 1/2 cup of whipping cream. I'm exhausted just typing all that out, but don't worry -- this recipe is easy and fun! (In true 1970s casserole spirit, you could probably replace most of the middle stuff with a can of mushroom soup, but we won't do that, will we?)

The first task is to fry the chicken. Just pop it in a pan over medium and sizzle away in a blob of oil for about 15 minutes. You just want to cook it through and brown it up a little. You may as well fire-up the oven to 375 before you forget (like I always do).

Pop the chicken on a plate to cool while you do everything else.

We're going to make a bechamel sauce -- a pretty basic sauce that you can use for all kinds of stuff. The idea is to melt a bunch of butter, add some flour to make a thin paste (or roux if you prefer), then add milk to dissolve that paste and cook it down a little to create a thick, creamy sauce. So, lets melt that butter (4-5 tablespoon ballpark here).

Then whisk in 1/4 cup of flour a little at a time.

Once the flour is thoroughly incorporated into the butter, you're ready for the milk.

Gradually add the cup of milk while whisking constantly. Then add the stock, half of the parm, some salt and pepper, and a healthy grating of nutmeg. Interestingly enough, I dug Saveur 134 out of my "to read pile" a day later, and they have this whole feature on nutmeg in there. Did you know Grenada has nutmeg on their flag? I thought we were freaky for having a leaf, but nutmeg is take-the-cake cool. This sauce needs to bubble away and thicken up for about 10 minutes on gentle heat. That gives you time to whirl-wind through all the following steps.

First, chop your chicken breasts on an angle into nice slices. Then steam your broccoli for about two minutes and...

...put it down as the base layer in a buttered casserole dish.

Then add the other half of your grated parm.

Put the chicken on top of that.

Sprinkle on a layer of slivered almonds, and get ready for the final steps of the sauce by...

...whipping the 1/2 cup of cream (THERE'S WHIPPED CREAM IN THIS! COULD IT BE BETTER?!)

Stir the sherry into your bechamel (I hope you've been sipping the sherry too. My Gran said that Harvey's Bristol Cream was always a reliable way to get her appetite back whenever she was feeling down. All I can say is that I think it's great stuff, and I can confirm that I was pretty hungry after a few belts too). Stir the whipped cream into the sauce while you're having all of these great thoughts.

Pour your rich and yummy beyond belief sauce over the casserole.

And bake it at 375 for 30 minutes (if your casserole dish is a little shallow, something to catch any bubble-over is a good idea).

Dish up and enjoy with rice or egg noodles. This dish was a hit with the kids. I found the broccoli cream combo to be somehow comforting and a little weird at the same time. The almonds are a key part of the dish, by the way -- they give a nice little crunch to what would otherwise be a big bowl of goop. Are you sold yet? I was, and it's a repeat for sure.

Afterwards, please reward yourself with a well earned beer (to wash down all that sherry and stuff). How do you like my cool new beer jug from Beau's? It holds almost 2 litres! Oh yeah!! This will be a joy on the picnic table, where the beer will be kept cool and out of the sun. Where do these genius people keep coming from?

Bye for now, and bon appetit!

Starting peppers from seed...part 2

2011-02-04T10:08:00.000-08:00

Ok! I have now realised this will be completely unmanageable in one post, so I am splitting it into two. Part 1 was all about germination, Part 2 (this one!) will be about planting and getting them growing, and maybe there'll even be a Part 3 on getting them outside. (Ok, I'm splitting it into 3.)

My computer is still roasted, but I've managed to find a temporary solution. So let's get on with it!

If you've had your peppers in a nice warm place, you should start to see little white roots emerging from the seeds after a week or so (be patient, this can take a looooooong time for some varieties like C. chinense and most of the wild cultivars of the other Capsicums). If you have nothing after a month, your seeds may be in deep dormancy (or REALLY deep dormancy, i.e. dead), or the spot you have may not be warm enough: remember that around 85F is optimal.

The first thing to do once you have roots is to make sure the soil in your pots is nice and damp (with warm water, of course) and make a little hole for each seed. I make holes with the back of my tweezers, since I'll be needing the front bits in a second.

Then you gently remove your pepper seeds from the bag (put the bag back after, so more seeds can germinate). Be super careful about the root -- if it breaks, you're done. I grab the seeds at the back end as far from the root as possible, and don't squeeze to hard (but don't be so wimpy that you drop it, which is worse).

If your seed is farther along (i.e. you weren't checking them every day) you can still take them out by scootching the tweezers under the stem and carefully lifting them. Watch-out here though, because the root hairs can embed into the paper towel if you wait too long. Don't tug on the stem if this happens, just use your tweezers to tear the paper towel out around the roots so that the paper comes with it -- that way you don't damage the roots, and the paper just decomposes in the soil as the pepper starts growing.

Place your seed into the hole you made, and make sure the root points down. The seed needs to be just below the surface -- deep enough so that the seed coat can be pushed-off, but not so deep that it can't make it out of the dirt. (Note -- if the seed coat doesn't come off it's not the end of the world: I've seen peppers pop them off after they emerge. You can help this along though by keeping the seed coat moist by spraying it now and then so it doesn't dry out and entoomb your little pepper leaves.)

I cover my seeds with fine sand at this point. It drains well, doesn't from a crust, and is heavy enough to help the seedling shed the seed coat. There is usually enough moisture in the soil to dampen the sand once it is poured in (go very slowly though, since big gobs of sand have been know to fall out on the peppers of inattentive people). You can also just use the soil you have in the pots, but I find that peaty stuff can lift up with the seed coat causing stressful remedial efforts like the misting above, so it isn't as good as sand.

Once the seeds are planted, get them under some lights. I use 4 foot fluorescent light fixtures from Canadian Tire. They're cheap to buy, energy efficient, provide a little warmth, and they work really well. Make sure the pots are as close to the lights as possible to ensure maximum brightness -- as you can see, this takes some engineering sometimes. You could grow them on a window sill too, but I find the sunshine is too unreliable around these parts at this time of year (and window sills are too cold) to keep the peppers in a state of optimal health and growth.

After a few days, your seedlings should make an appearance and you're off to the races. Keep the soil damp (but not soaking wet) and gradually move the plants lower as they start to grow (but always try to keep the leaves only a few inches away from the lights).

In a couple of weeks, the seedlings can be pricked-out to grow in individual pots. It's better to do it that way than to start in big pots from the beginning because there is a tendency for the soil in the bottom of a larger pot to get all compacted and gross before any roots get down there. If that happens the pepper won't thrive (they don't like cold wet feet -- who does?), so it's best to move them gradually to a larger pot and keep them chugging away in perfect rooty bliss. I'll post the potting-on process once the time comes. 'Til then:

Peace through peppers!

Starting peppers from seed

2011-01-29T16:42:00.000-08:00

Ok, this one is not about cooking. Sometimes, though, you can't buy cool stuff that you would like to cook with. So, you either have to a) give up, b) substitute (sometimes ok), or c) get on with it and grow the damn stuff yourself! This is a post related to c).

In this post, I’ll detail my pepper starting secrets (ooooooh!). It will be a “living document” -- lame work tecno-babble I know, but I couldn't think of anything better. I plan to update it as one stage of pepper growing moves to the next – that way you can get going now. I think this is better than having me wait until all is said and done and posting it all in July when it will be totally useless. So stay tuned for updates!

I’ll be going through a couple of basic stages: 1) seed germination, 2) planting, 3) growing the seedlings, 4) potting on, and 5) getting them outside. This, at least, is the plan, so we’ll see how it evolves…. And don't despair if you think it's too late -- it's not. I start pretty early, but things will still work out if you get moving before the end of February -- that gives you time to order seeds, get them in the mail, and start your odessey into the awesome and cheerful world of chiles! :D They make me smile. Great seed sources include Seeds of Change, Seed Savers Exchange, Seeds of Diversity (but you have to be a member -- like me!), J.L. Hudson -- you should check this cat out anyway, The Pepper Gal, and your local Seedy Saturday!

If you already have seeds, you need to check-out your well organised seed stash and decide what you want to grow. As you can see, my seeds are as well organised as the rest of my life.

There are 5 commonly (ok, 1 is common, and 4 are less-common) grown species of pepper, all of which belong to the genus Capsicum. The species are: 1) annuum: the standard bell peppers, jalapenos, serranos, numex types, poblanos (a.k.a. ancho when dried), etc... 2) chinense: habaneros, scotch bonnets, and their cousins -- once thought to be from China (hence chinense), but actually from South/Central America, 3) baccatum: my favourites -- native of Peru and Bolivia, and often referred to by their aboriginal name: Aji, 4) frutescens: the best known is the tobasco pepper, but a couple of peppers commonly used in China are also of this species, and 5) pubescens: the black-seeded Rocoto chiles of Bolivia that, to me, are the hottest freaking things you can imagine -- to me they are hotter than habaneros, and that's saying something.

If you want to learn more about chiles, I heartily recommend The Pepper Garden by Dave DeWitt and Paul Bosland. Dave is the founder of Chile Pepper magazine (still in circulation!) and Paul is a prof at New Mexico State University and does research and breeding projects on chiles (Paul created the Twilight variety which is, to me, the no-contest most beautiful plant out there). Both Dave and Paul are as enthusiastic about chiles as they are knowledgable. You could also try and find a copy of Jean Andrews's Peppers if you're absolutely consumed by your quest for knowledge about the Capsicums -- or you can just borrow my copy (if you promise to sit and read it in my living room while I watch you to make sure you don't get Doritos prints on my pages).

ANYWAY, lets get the seeds started. This is a pretty simple process. The MAIN thing you need to know is that pepper seeds need heat to germinate (remember this now). Most do best at around 85 degrees. This is next to impossible to achieve in a pot filled with dirt (and even more impossible if you live in Canada), so my big trick is to get the seeds to germinate BEFORE they go into any dirt -- once they sprout, they will keep growing, but the trick is to get them to sprout before you plant them.

To do this, you'll need some Ziploc bags and some paper towel. Put two sheets (the regular sized sheets -- three of those weird skinny ones they've been making lately) of folded paper towel in each baggie and add about 1-2 tablespoons of water (not too much -- just enough to keep the paper moist but not soaking -- I guess it depends on if you use Bounty or not). In the simplest version of this project, you just label your bags (four types of chile fit easily in each one), sprinkle some seeds in there, put them somwhere warm, and wait.

Of course, most houses in Canada have few spots anywhere near 85 degrees in mid-January -- this is the main problem with this whole project. So, you need to find a place for germination. Likely candidates are:

1) anywhere your cat sleeps,

2) on your furnace ducts,

3) on the fluorescent lights you use for keeping your rosemary alive through the winter,

[sorry, no picture of my belly]

4) I dunno -- use your imagination! On top of the fridge near the back? Somewhere near the woodstove (don't melt the bags!)? Strapped to your belly? The possibilities are limitless! Just keep them warm.

Now, for the advanced pepper growers out there, you can consider bleach treatments, potassium nitrate soaks, using tri-sodium phosphate to kill viruses, giberellins to break dormancy, etc.... But all this stuff enters pain-in-the-ass territory, so avoid it all if you can! Keep it fun! (But e-mail me if you need help.)

So, here we are. Your seeds are in a warm, moist environment and are getting ready to germinate. This will take a couple of days, but check your Ziplocs every day to look for little roots, and get ready for step 2: Planting...! I think you deserve a great beer now! (And for the purists out there who might point out that I used the wrong glass [*cough-Richard-this-means-you*] all I can say is pffffffffft.)

Next installment: planting.

Sorry... need to do a pre-planting post! You have to get your dirt ready. This is an outside project, since you don't want the dusty gunk that flows out of the pots to go down any of your drains. Small pots are best for the first planting. Those little styrofoam flats that you can buy flowers in are great too -- I just couldn't find mine (I think they're under the snow in the back yard somewhere). Pick a nice, loose potting mix. I'm using an organic one that Miracle Grow has come out with (how could I resist?! Organic AND Miracle Grow!). Just scoop some potting mix into each pot or flat and water it in. Make sure to get the pots back into the house before they freeze onto wherever you watered them. Now you're ready for the seeds when they sprout -- this is preferable to finding that they have already sprouted and being without soil, pots, or both. Next post -- planting!

Coconut bread

2011-01-23T15:23:00.000-08:00

Gourmet magazine folded with the November 2009 issue after 68 years in circulation (I have an extra November 2009 issue that I'll sell you for only one million dollars - à la Dr. Evil). I bought Gourmet now and then, but it was an unstable relationship since it was more about being rich and travelling than it was about cooking, so only a few complete issues remain on my bookshelf -- I did tear out lots of pages though. I think the magazine was probably aimed at people who could flip thorough it, dog-ear a couple of pages, and hand it to the help. This may be why it vanished, but I am still astonished when I pass a magazine rack and see stuff devoted to scrap booking, toy soldiers, and quilting -- how these keep going is beyond me (no offence if you happen to be interested in that stuff). You might wonder why I ever bought it at this point, but I got sucked in by the pictures -- especially the awesome table settings.

Anyway, the good editors of Gourmet would throw a bone to us plebes now and then with features like "cooking with five ingredients," or "gourmet on a shoestring" (a Prada shoestring, mind you, but still a shoestring). This recipe comes from the five ingredients feature in the May 2003 issue (one of my torn-out pages). I've been looking for a nice quick-bread to make on weekends so that I can take slices to work through the week. I've had my eye on this recipe for a while (7 years! holy embarassing getting-around-to-itness). The idea is that those slices will keep me from drifting down to the cafeteria and buying the -- I was going to type crud, but that's unfair, how about -- uninspiring offerings they have down there.

By the way, this is a good time for a beer!

This recipe calls for 4 cups of flaked coconut (10 ounces -- I used 14 by accident), 2 cups of self-rising flour, 1 stick of softened butter, 1/2 cup of sugar, and 2 large eggs. See how they cheated there? Self-rising flour?! Who buys that?! All so they can avoid having two more ingredients (namely baking powder and salt). Thankfully, The Joy of Cooking tells us that 1 cup of self-rising flour has 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon of salt in it. (Write this down, or buy the cookbook -- it's useful!) So, 2 cups of flour means you need to add 3 teaspoons of baking powder and 1 teaspoon of salt too. :D Genius!!

This is a Carribean themed recipe, so I figured a couple of other ingredients wouldn't hurt -- namely rum ... and some currents to soak it up. So, I put a hand full of currants is a bowl with a splash or so of rum to help them plump up. Genius again!

The first thing you need to do is toast the coconut. I couldn't find large flaked coconut that wasn't sweetened, so went for the medium version. The recipe calls for you to toast three cups of it and save 1 cup for later. Heat your oven to 350, spread the three cups on a baking sheet, and pop it in the oven for 25 minutes.

I gave the coconut a stir when there were 11 and 5 minutes left on the timer. I just heaped it all up in the middle and then spread it out flat again for the next go-round in the oven.

While that's happening, you might as well get a batch of zuppa di fagioli on the go. Just sayin'.

When the coconut is toasted, let it cool on a rack for 15 minutes. Drop the oven to 325 too.

Spend that time getting the rest of the batter ready. Put the flour (and baking powder and salt) in a bowl.

Then cream the butter with the sugar in your bad-boy mixer (man, I really think this thing looks cool). For the record, the mixer should be on speed 4 for creaming butter and sugar -- resist the urge to crank it up, or you'll just melt the butter and make a greasy goo. After a few minutes (with the occasional stop to scrape the sides and the paddle) start adding the eggs one by one. Let that slosh around (stopping to scrape again) for a few minutes until it looks nicely blended.

Now you have to grind the coconut up in a food processor. You basically make toasted coconut flour, mmmmm.... The recipe says to process for 40 seconds -- I bailed out after 25 because it looked like I was about to make coconut butter. Good luck getting the coconut in the food processor without making a colossal mess. I am not certain this step is absolutely necessary with medium coconut, but I did it anyway.

Next, you need to mix the coconut (toasted and not toasted) with the flour. Then add 1 cup of water (HA!! A sixth ingredient!!). The recipe says to whisk it in, but only a maniac would stick a whisk in something that thick. In fact, I think it was too thick. Part of the problem may have been that I should have measured the coconut meal before putting it in the bowl -- the recipe calls for 1 1/4 cups after the processing, which may be what large flakes will grind down into, but it is definitely less than the medium ones came out with (I did use a whole 400g bag -- which is more like 14oz than 10oz -- but that's just the kind of guy I am). Luckily, I had a bunch of rum in a bowl that I could dump in, and I added an extra 1/2 cup of water too. This may sound pretty airy-fairy in the directions department, but don't worry -- it's a quick bread! (And if you actually follow the instructions, it probably works.)

Once you have something that seems reasonable (good instructions, eh?) add the eggs, butter and sugar to the batter and stir that around (they still say to whisk it -- crazy).

Get a loaf pan ready by buttering and flouring it.

Then pour (dump) the batter in there and smooth it out a little. My pan was too full, so I scooped out two wooden spoons worth of batter to keep it from overflowing too much. I could have made muffins from the extra, but at this point, and with the zuppa di fagioli on the go (just sayin'), I wasn't interested in getting another pan involved in all this mess.

Slide the loaf pan into a 325 oven for about an hour. The recipe calls for an hour to an hour and 10 minutes, but I think my batter was a little drier than it should be so I started checking at around 50 minutes (i.e. once I had all those freaking dishes cleaned up). In the end it was done at the one hour mark -- check with a toothpick (that comes all the way from China, if you have one -- man, I love that joke).

Take your creation out of the oven and let it cool in the pan on a wire rack for about 15 minutes. Then get it out of the pan and let it cool for another TWO HOURS (good luck waiting that long -- I didn't). Play Legend while you wait ... and stir your zuppa di fagioli (just sayin').

Then get ready for a happy week at work. (It's REALLY good, by the way.)

Peace, brothers and sisters.

Chicken à l'Armagnac

2011-01-15T16:44:00.000-08:00

I bought myself a new pot over Christmas, and have been waiting for an oppotunity to properly christen it. Stand back! Here it is!

This recipe comes from Around my french table by Dorie Greenspan and it's as simple as it is delicious. The cookbook is wonderful, by the way (as you can probably guess from all the sticky notes attached to it); it has great photos, inspiring recipes, and nice stories and commentary throughout. My one quibble is the spine of the dust jacket. It has this picture of the author on it, and while I have no doubt that she's a charming person, in the photo it looks like she's peeking out from around a corner. This shouldn't be a big deal, but the cookbook shelf in my kitchen happens to be around a corner, and whenever I walk by I get startled by what looks like a little elf standing there and staring at me.

See?! It gives me the willies! (I know -- just remove the dust jacket. But not so fast, smarty pants: it's the same underneath!) Oh well, a small price to pay for easy access to good eats -- and I suppose we could all use a little startling now and again.

This is another chicken in a pot recipe, and is not all that much different (but different enough, of course). I remember reading a review of this cookbook, and someone complained that there were three, count 'em, THREE, roast chicken recipes in it. Imagine! They're all unique, but I suppose there are people out there who just run around looking for things to complain about. (Actually, I don't suppose, I know it.)

To make this, you need a Dutch oven (you need a Dutch oven regardless). Aside from the chicken, you'll also need about 8 small spuds, 3 roughly chopped onions (I used four leeks, unchopped), two carrots (mine were small, so there are three), a bay leaf, a sprig (or three!) of rosemary, a sprig of thyme (Canada being Canada at this time of year, my thyme is frozen solid under a whack of snow, so I used the dried version -- from the same plant, mind you), and some salt and pepper. You'll also need 1/2 cup of Armagnac. Armagnac is basically a brandy made from a specific set of grapes, so you can substitute brandy or Cognac instead if you like. But don't -- the bottle is WAY too cool!

Heat a splash of olive oil in the Dutch oven over medium heat for a few minutes (and get your regular oven started on the way to 450). Chop the vegetables in chunks that will cook in about an hour. I left the leeks as is, chopped the spuds in half (not so much to ensure they cook, but to ensure that they soak up all kinds of chicken fat and booze -- just sayin'), and split each carrot into three chunks or so. Dump all the vegetables in the pot and stir them around for a few minutes. I think the point here is to get them coated in oil and warm the pot rather than to do any cooking. Add the herbs and give them a stir.

Then push the vegetables to the sides and nestle the chicken into all that goodness. Sprinkle the chicken with salt and pepper. (The recipe calls for white pepper, but I'm fine with little black specks, it also says to rub-in the salt and pepper, but I'm not a big fan of rubbing chickens, so I sprinkle.) Then pour the booze in around the edges (I'm thinking bourbon might be fun to try here some day -- also just sayin'). Let the booze warm up for a couple of seconds, then put the lid on the Dutch oven and fire it into the oven for one hour.

Now you can sit around and guzzle some vino. You can cook some rice too if you want. Or maybe prepare some filet beans and get them ready for steaming. Whatever you like. I spent my time typing in all this crap (and guzzling vino, just so you don't feel too sorry for me).

An hour later, your chicken is cooked and it's time to make some sauce! (Be careful when you open the lid -- there will be lots of boozy steam. The danger lies in getting scaled and/or instantly getting hammered by 1/2 cup of Armagnac vapour.) I have heard that hunger makes the best sauce, but to be honest, sauce is even better! All you need to do (and don't tell your friends, because it's embarassingly simple) is get the chicken out of there, add a cup of water, and stir that around for about 5 minutes over medium heat. (The recipe suggests that you skim the fat off before making the sauce, but I never do that. I expect my lifespan will likely be shortend -- and rendered more awesome -- accordingly.)

A bowl is a good place to put the chicken while you are on sauciere duty. You can cover it in foil to keep it warm, or if you're thrifty and enviro conscious, (and ingenous enough to buy the right sized bowls and pots -- just sayin') you can use your pot lid.

The sauce comes out a little thin, so if you want something gravy-like be prepared to add some cornstarch or flour -- personally, I'd be reluctant to upset the flavour balance with the starch, but the soupy factor can be an issue if you don't have rice on the plate to soak it up.

Serve however you please. You can do the slicing and dicing in the kitchen, or arrange the bird and vegetables on a platter and plunk it all down on the table and serve from there. All that matters is that you enjoy the meal, have fun, and feel thankful that we get to do such things. It's recipes like this that keep me from being vegan ... recipes like this, and bacon.

If you have any leftovers, you're set for sandwiches the next day. And be sure to save the bones for chicken stock. Thanks for joining me on the maiden voyage of my blue pot, and bon appetit!!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and watch Starman. Then I'm going to spend the better part of next week saying stuff like "I look like Scott," and "Jenny Hayden," and "What is gas?" and "It's teriffic!", and "Ari-zona." You have been warned.

Winter gardening

2011-01-13T16:53:00.000-08:00

Well, it's mid-January, and a young man's thoughts turn to gardening. This may seem a little cheeky, since Mother Nature has barely gotten started on her annual winter ass-kicking. Doubly cheeky since I'm referring to myself, and I'm no spring chicken. It may seem too early to most people to engage in such vernal flights of fancy, but I have some kinds of chile that need to get started soon if I want any peppers out of them, and it's also seed catalogue season, so planning and seed ordering go together like, well, planning and ordering.

My dad was big on gardening and was famous in the neighbourhood for growing these MASSIVE hubbard squashes which my brother and I thoroughly despised since we had to eat them all winter. We were also pretty bummed out at missing Saturday morning cartoons for the sake of pulling and washing carrots, digging up spuds, and the annual moving of 5 yards of manure from the driveway to the backyard. (Although I did earn my first swig of Molson Export via this toil, so there were clearly some benefits.) So, as you can imagine, I stayed far away from soil and seeds until fate landed me a job, and I got paid to do it. This job was at Bellevue House National Historic Site, and I worked there as a "period gardener" in the summers of 1991 and 1994 (during the intervening years I was off in Africa letting snails devour my bean plants -- but that's another story).

At Bellevue House, I worked with a charming fellow named Colin, who was the head gardener (he's in the first picture on the link above). The first day at work, he told me how much Spanish onions made him fart, and we got along famously from then on. The job consisted of planting and tending the historically representative garden and apple orchard, taking people on tours, and spending hours and hours scything the grass (funnily enough I just discovered that I'm cutting the grass in the second picture in that link -- I'm the one in the blue shirt in the back doing it right). That job was Paradise.

Needless to say, I learned a whole bunch about gardening and about heirloom varieties of herbs and vegetables, got a good tan, and gained some interesting perspectives from tourists from all over the world. (Colin's famous way of dealing with the occasional very opinionated visitor was to listen attentively, nod, and say "You may be right!" A tool I still find to be very effective, and which I have passed on to my girls.)

ANYWAY, all that to say I like gardening now, and I have a particular fondness for old varieties of plants that have a bit of a tale to tell. My gardening philosophy is to grow stuff that:

a) I can't buy (epazote, chervil, tarragon, Mexican oregano, cavalo nero kale)
b) that I can buy, but sucks if it comes from a store (bay laurel, most herbs, lettuce, arugula)
c) is rare and/or neato (crimson flowered fava beans, trout beans, Egyptian onions, Aji chiles)
d) I have been keeping going since I worked at Bellevue House (costmary, lovage, sweet cicely)
e) is just plain fun or cool (ginkgo trees, horseradish, spuds, garlic, Painted Lady runner beans)
f) is nice to be able to just go out and grab for cooking or eating out of hand (thyme, tomatoes, radishes)
and
g) will keep me from dying, ever (sage)

To be honest, I didn't realise I had such a detailed philosophy. Note that this is different from my daily philosophy that comes from "'Cause I'm a blonde" and which goes like this: I know lots of people are smarter than me, but I have this philosophy, "So what?". I also now realise why I can never manage to fit everything into my two eight foot by eight foot garden beds.

So here's my plan for this year. I grew out my funky favas and stupendous spuds last year, so will give some space over to the sqash family (in particular some red kuri squash that I sought-out after reading a recipe that called for it -- this may in fact be the longest recipe I have ever made: "Step one: eight months before you make this soup, go order some red kuri squash seeds.") Herbs cover the edges of the garden beds, but some may need a little taming (if you need some tarragon, horseradish, Egyptian onions, or costmary let me know!). I am also planning to avoid the tragedy of slugs I suffered last summer by getting more plants started indoors so they have enough of a head start to get ahead of the little slimy bastards (bless their souls). We'll see! And I plan to divulge my pepper seed starting secrets very soon, so stay tuned!

So that's the plan. I won't stick too it, mind you, and the garden will be in total chaos before you can say "There were a bunch of plants on sale at Home Depot!" but it's fun to imagine it in the depths of winter anyway. If you're interested in some cool places to look for plants or seeds, I can recommend Richters for herbs, and for vegetables the Seed Saver's Exchange and Seeds of Change. And if you're super keen, be sure to check out Seeds of Diversity for a Seedy Saturday near you!

Winter Salad

2011-01-09T15:09:00.000-08:00

It can be tough to "eat your greens" this time of year, especially if you happen to have locavore tendencies and live in Canada. Not that I have anything against meat, mind you, I just get that verge-of-scurvy feeling every now and then and need to come up with some kind of fresh veggie dish fast.

This one comes from Olives & oranges (the irony is thick following the locavore comment above, I know) by Sara Jenkins and Mindy Fox. How could I resist a cookbook by someone named Mindy? I also like how the subtitle is "Recipes & flavor secrets from Italy, Spain, Cyprus & beyond" -- very Buzz Lightyear. It happens to be very nice, with great photos and some inspiring recipies like this one, which was called winter root salad with English farmhouse cheddar. Don't worry if you're low on English farmhouse cheddar (or roots for that matter) -- you can make do like me.

The recipe calls for half a small red cabbage (which I had), a celery root and some radishes (which I didn't), two carrots (which I did), an apple (ditto), and some parsley (you know me and parsley -- I skipped it). You'll also need some salt, pepper if you like, and some fine vinegar and olive oil. If you want a little garnish, some toasted pepitas or pecans would be a nice addition.

I hauled out my trusty mandoline for this job, since the cabbage needs fine slicing and the other vegetables need to be julienned (you can grate them if you don't have a trusty mandoline). Slice the cabbage first. This one has been rolling around in the bottom of my fridge since October which, if you ask me, is totally awe inspiring.

My mandoline comes with these little combs that can be put in for making julienned vegetables. I went with the 4mm comb, and sliced up the carrots next. (This is a good way to get rid of the big fat carrot they usually stick in the bag somewhere.)

Put the carrots and cabbage in a bowl and add about 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt and mix it all around with your hands. Let that sit for around 5 minutes while you do the other stuff. If you use celery root and radishes they should be put in the bowl at the same time as the cabbage and carrot. The salt will season them, and wilt them a little so they aren't so raw and crunchy.

Next in should be your cheese. The recipe says to crumble in about 5 oz of old cheddar. I didn't have any, so I grated up some pecorino romano instead (oops, locavore goes out the window!).

Finally, put your julienned apple in there (pick a tart one if you can like a Mac or russet or Granny Smith) and add 4 tablespoons of olive oil and 2 tablespoons of wine (or, if you're like me, sherry) vinegar. Mix it all up with your hands, but not too much or the cabbage will make everything all purple, and...

...serve! Those are good eats, and it shore is purty! Scurvy has been kept at bay for another day!

Spice bread

2011-01-02T13:51:00.000-08:00

This recipe comes from a cookbook called Crave by Ludo Lefebvre. There were several irresistable things about this cookbook: the name, the author's name, the photos, and the fact that it was supposed to cost $65 but was on for 10 bucks in a remainders bin. Choice! It's a pretty frou-frou cookbook, but has some great recipes if you want to impress people with something off the charts (my only sea urchin recipe is in here, for example). This means of course, that it's a little thin on day-to-day fare. However, I did spy this cool spice bread on the first flip through it (pain d'epices in the book, but I never like the idea of a recipe that starts with "pain"). What prompted me to finally cook it was my neighbour. He stopped by yesterday to wish me a happy New Year, and gave me a piece of Carribean fruit cake. It was SO good that I had to make more of it today. I'll hit them up for their recipe at the next opportunity, but for now, this one will fill the gap (and it rocks, too!).

You need a whole whack of ingredients to pull this off, several of which I didn't have on hand. But have no fear! Wing it! You'll need several spices (2 teaspoons of ground cinnamon, 2 teaspoons of ground star anise, 1 teaspoon of ground nutmeg, 1/2 teaspoon of ground cloves, and 1/4 teaspoon of ground cumin), there's also some orange and lemon peel in there (the recipe calls for 1 tablespoon of orange zest and 2 teaspoons of lemon zest: I'm fresh out of both -- damn bourbon sours! -- but I did have some dried peel to substitute), about 1 1/3 cups of mixed nuts (I used almonds and pecans), 1/3 cup of raisins (mine were kind of dry so I soaked them in rum -- smart, eh?), and 1/3 cup of candied fruit (I didn't have any, but did have some currants and dried pears that I used instead). You'll also need some rum, honey, flour, and baking soda. Nice list!

I have a coffee grinder that is devoted to spice duty. Grind the orange and lemon peel (if you use dried) with the cloves, star anise, and cumin. I had some ground cinnamon on hand (grinding it fresh is a pain). By the way, the recipe calls for Ceylon cinnamon which I do happen to have, if you only have the regular one I'd drop it down to 1 teaspoon. I also grind my nutmeg separately in a little nutmeg grinder that looks like a pepper mill.

After all that grinding, you should have a nice pile of spices. Add 1/2 teaspoon of salt to the pile. (You could probably avoid most of the above hassle with a tablespoon or two of Chinese five spice powder, but where's the fun in that?!)

Whisk the spices into 1 1/2 cups of flour.

Then start chopping the nuts and fruit. The currants and raisins were ok as is, but the pears needed some chopping. Take your time with this: you want nice small pieces. Play some tunes, pour a beer, and enjoy the chopping time. (I started soaking the raisins in rum at the start of the recipe, then I dumped them -- rum and all -- into the other fruits so they could all get to know each other.)

Now you need to make a syrup. Mix 1 1/4 cups of water with 3/4 cup of honey and half a cup of sugar in a saucepan. Add two tablespoons of rum too (or, if you're inclined to excess like some people I *cough* know, then scoop out a tablespoon of water and add an extra one of rum). Start heating your oven to 325. Bring they syrup to a boil. Ludo says to do this over high heat, but I know that molten syrup is no friend of the inattentive, so I recommend heat 8 max.

Once your syrup starts to bubble, pour it (careful!) into the flour and spices and mix all that up.

Then work in the fruit. Then the nuts. (You may need to start a new beer by now.)

And finally, add 1 tablespoon of baking soda and mix that in too.

Pour the batter into a greased loaf pan. Then discover that your loaf pan is too small (I have been burned by putting too much batter in a loaf pan before -- not this time, sukka!). So, drag out a muffin tin, grease a couple of the forms, and pour the rest of the batter in there. If you do this, fill the other muffin forms with water. I read once that this helps keep the pan from distorting or blowing up or something. The water can't hurt while baking, so why not? (It does make extracting the muffins a bit of an adventure later, but who can't use more adventure?!)

Pop it all in the oven.

Your muffins should be done in 35 minutes (mine were anyway, and since this is the first time anyone ever made pain d'epices muffins, you'll have to trust me -- or you could check at 20 minutes with a toothpick and go from there). Getting the muffins out of a tray full of water is a trick. Here's the trick. Just do a little twist after you grab, and they come out just fine.

The bread is done after 55 minutes total (or after your toothpick comes out clean) -- i.e. 20 minutes after the muffins come out. Give it 5 minutes to cool in the pan, then turn it out on a wire rack to cool completely before you try to slice it. And guess what? It is smokin'! If you like dark fruitcake, or like to go "WOWZA!" when you eat something, then this should be right up your alley. Personally, I'll take this kind of pain any day.