Sunday, October 26, 2008

Chili

I don't have a picture. Chili pretty much isn't the best looking dish but it is packed with so many flavours. I first browned local sirloin beef and local ground beef in a stew pot with some olive oil. I did this browning in several stages to make sure all the meat had a secure spot to some hot metal.

I chopped up carrot, celery, and onion along with several cloves of garlic from Trisha's grandfather's garden (this garlic is in the ground now for us next year in our back yard).

I made a fresh chili seasoning with paprika, ancho chili powder, cumin, coriander, dried hot chilis, dried mustard seed, oregano, pepper, and salt. Several of those were whole and toasted and then everything was ground up in a mortar and pestle.

The veggies were sweated out after the beef. They were removed and I de-glazed the pot with what was leftover in a hot chipotle salsa jar we got at the City Market last week and some water to clear the jar. The smell coming from the pot was amazing at this point with the salsa, vegetable, and browned beef aromas. Everything was added back in. Then, about 6 large tomatoes I had frozen from a local farm were blanched to remove the skins and added in. They dissolved and mixed in with everything else.

Simmered this with a couple bay leaves for quite awhile and then added dark chocolate, cocoa powder, and sugar. Trisha made some bread.

A great dish for a windy rainy Sunday.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Thanks for giving beef stew


This beef stew started yesterday evening. Actually, it started a few days ago when I made chicken stock that was used in the broth for this dish. I'll leave the chicken stock alone and just say later when I added it.

Beef, mostly shank with the bone and some various other stew-type cuts locally-raised. Browned, deeply after a salt & pepper seasoning. Then, your typical stock/broth/soup fixings were added in such as onion, celery, and carrot. Garlic, bay leaves, whole black peppercorns, rosemary, annato seeds, one dried thai-style chili pepper, the chicken stock, and a bit of salt all simmered with the beef for several hours. I then put that away for the night.

Then, this evening I heated this mixture back up, removed the carrots and beef. I then let the rest drain through a cheesecloth while pushing out as much liquid as possible. The carrots were mashed finely and then I started putting everything back together. Beef, the mashed carrots, fresh carrots (from the garden), turnip (from the garden), and waxy potatoes (from the garden), the broth, and then topped off with a bit of red wine and water. I let the new veggies cook halfway with the lid on and halfway with the lid off. The mashed carrots and having the lid off helped thicken the broth of this stew. Some fresh kosher salt and ground pepper were added a few minutes before serving. Trisha made some bread today as you can see.

Very, very satisfying meal.

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Fork it Over

Visit [here] to see an article I just started contributing to this week. Every two weeks I'll be doing restaurant reviews with brufrog. Should be fun.

Monday, October 6, 2008

Sunday Eve


Chicken quarters, my favourite part of a chicken, were browned deeply in olive oil and its own fats. After flipping once I added a few crushed garlic cloves, sage, and thyme with a decent amount of butter. I then basted the chicken with the seasoned butter and left the garlic, sage, and thyme land where it did on the chicken. I then transferred the chicken to my oven at 300 degrees.

We made some risotto with bacon, wine, and chicken stock I made the day before.

The carrots were steamed and from my garden. They were finished in a bit of butter, salt and pepper, and some fresh basil from the garden.

I drained off some of the fat from the cast iron pan the chicken was cooked in. Removed the herbs but squeezed the soft garlic out of skin and crushed that with some chicken stock and let reduce for a sauce.


Sausage and Eggs


Sausage from Perry's at the City Market.

Scrambled eggs based upon this method by Gordon Ramsey.

Saturday, October 4, 2008

Chowdah Part Deux and 1/2


I made chowder again tonight. This time I went to Billy's and got a pre-made chowder mix that had haddock, salmon, scallops, and shrimps. We also got a few clams to add to this chowder. If you look at one of my earlier blog postings you'll see I made a lobster chowder. This time I pretty much did the same thing but I used bacon instead of pancetta. Since the fish and seafood were uncooked I added them in a bit earlier and then served just after the clams opened. The highlights of this dish were that the potatoes, herbs (thyme and parsley), and onions were from my garden. The garlic was from Trisha's grandfather's garden in Barrie, Ontario. We'll have babies of this garlic starting next summer. I had a few bay leaves in there that were not from my garden. This time around I went stronger with the herbs and fresh ground black pepper during cooking and then another round of pepper right in the dish before serving. I never thought I liked chowder growing up but now it is turning into one of my comfort dishes. Be sure to check out here this week for my first appearance in Fork it Over with Craig Pinhey.

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Pasta night, again


Pasta Carbonara was on the menu tonight. Hawk over at foodfunk gave me a starting point with this,

I just mix an egg yolk with a little cream and lots of fresh cracked black pepper in a pasta bowl and put that in the oven at 180 F while I prepare everything else. While the pasta is boiling, I saute two strips of bacon, chopped, in a fry pan. I'll pour off a bit of the fat, drain the pasta and toss it with the bacon. When it's blazing hot and soaking up that bacon flavour, I toss it into the now-just-warm cream mixture. Toss well and serve on a warm plate topped with more parmesan. The key is good quality bacon and lots of heat from fresh black pepper. I like this dish ferociously peppery. This is actually a dish I turn to often when I'm just cooking for myself - which I was last night.

Normally adding a generous amount of salt to the boiling water when cooking pasta is important. However, in this dish the bacon and parm adds quite a bit of saltiness so be very easy on the salt in the boiling water. I used two yolks because I was feeding two and used milk because I had no cream. If I had to guess I would probably say I used between 1/4 to 1/3 cups of milk. I also set my oven to 170, not 180 as the Hawk suggests.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Pho

Pho means soup in Vietnamese but in the West it means this Vietnamese-style soup dish made with an aromatic beef broth, noodles, beef, and herbs.

I based my Pho
recipe on these three websites:

Wikipedia, Vietworldkitchen, and Food Network USA.

I can't really say much more other than I wasn't able to get any rock sugar so I used regular sugar, I pounded the raw beef thin between two pieces of plastic wrap, and used the beef off the bones sliced thin after it was in the fridge overnight.