Marinated beets with goat cheese

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My Fall campaign to get the rest of my  home-grown beets on the menu has met with moderate success; beets now regularly colour gravies, sweeten braises and, grated, make their way into a number of dishes I won’t name here because L will stop eating them.

There are still plenty in the garden so last weekend I upped the ante a bit and used them openly, although sparingly, in a simplified version of this recipe adapted from Maze, the cookbook by Jason Atherton , chef at the Gordon Ramsay restaurant, Maze.

There’s something exciting about vegetables picked fresh from the garden in dark December long after the farmers markets have closed. Now that we have more snow on the ground than I normally like to see in an entire winter,  harvesting is going to seem even more miraculous.

The beets in this dish, quickly pickled in a flavourful marinade, have crunchy prominence but don’t overwhelm the goat cheese and pine nuts. The recipe called for a beet reduction to be added to the dressing, but I opted for a plain vinaigrette: there’s only so far I can push my luck. Or L, for that matter.

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Baked eggs and leeks

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I have a good friend who’s Welsh and I love to tease him about his national “flower.”  How can you take a country seriously when its national symbol is a member of the onion family?

baked eggs

Leeks seldom get centre stage the way they do in this flavourful little dish, which has given me a new respect for leeks. I hate to admit it, but maybe the Welsh are on to something after all.

I have only made this twice, but I am pretty sure it will make regular appearances at our table. The bite of the leeks, cooked down a little it butter to take of a bit of the edge, is exactly the right compliment for the egg, which is baked in a little cream. Don’t overcook this; the soft yolk mixing with the cream and butter is what gives this dish the richness it needs to offset the sharpness of the leeks .

This would work equally well as breakfast, lunch or a light dinner. It is quick enough for the busiest weeknight and elegant enough for guests, especially if they’re Welsh.

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Lobster bisque

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The first time I cooked lobster, I couldn’t eat it. At the time I thought it was the act of killing them that put me off. But now I think the fact that I foolishly held a lobster race on the kitchen floor to entertain my then two-year-old while the water heated was likely the real source of my unease.

Nowadays,  my kitchen is regularly the final stop for lobsters.  But they are treated with respect – I keep them in the bag until the last minute; we don’t play with them. There is still nothing elegant about the process, but it is done with dignity.

Here’s a bisque I made for a crowd last week.  It was loosely adapted from a recipe in the New York Times.

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Freezer burn

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(Based loosely on a partly true story)

“What are you doing?” I asked even though it was perfectly clear what she was doing. She was cleaning out the freezer because we were expecting half a pig from our CSA farm any day.

I was supposed to have done that by now.

L’s head was deep in the freezer but I am almost sure she said,  “what does it look like I’m doing? I’m making room for you.”

There were two piles of food outside the freezer: a small one destined to be arranged neatly back in the freezer and a much, much larger one with a much different fate. There was a brand new box of 40 green plastic body bags standing by.

If my Scottish ancestors had written the Bible and it had been MacMoses delivering the 10 Commandments, the first one (even before the one about coveting thy neighbour’s ass) would have been “Thou shalt not waste food.”

But there it was, tons of it about to be wasted. My entire collection of vintage frozen vegetables still in their original packages.

“Those are going to be worth something someday,” I ventured lamely to the part of L that wasn’t in the deep freeze. It wasn’t the listening part.

I looked at the pile. There were several containers of turkey gravy that I am going to say were labeled “Christmas 07,” even though the seven looked suspiciously like a one.

There were several on-sale-too-good-to-pass-up pork shoulders (yes, we were throwing out pork to make room for pork),  some fish that was caught during the Clinton administration and a frozen lasagna I had ignored so many times it was like an old friend.

I stood there, overwhelmed with guilt and worried that the chill in the air had more to do with the fact I had failed to get this started than the fact the freezer door had been open for 20 minutes.

And then, I spotted it. Half hidden under a pile of paleolithic pasta sauce was a perfectly fine pound of ground lamb. I could feel indignation rising in me like a well-made soufflé. There was nothing wrong with this lamb at all; it couldn’t be more (not much more, anyway) than a year old). This was an outrage.

I grabbed the lamb and left her there muttering something about “sunk costs” (she has an MBA).

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Pecan caramel cheesecake

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This is officially my all-time favourite dessert. Combining pecans, caramel and dreamy rich cheesecake has got to be close to illegal it’s so good.

I am having trouble writing with my mouth full so, I’ll cut straight to the recipe, which comes from chow.com. Note: I omitted the salt, which I am sure would have made this even more sinfully delicious, but I was raised Presbyterian and deep down I know that something this satisfying must be endangering my immortal soul. Leaving out the salt makes me feel I have a tiny shot at redemption.

Have on hand: crostini

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Crostini is Italian for “little crust,” in our house it’s translated as “why are we eating bread when we could be eating crostini?”

In theory, I make crostini with left-over baguettes that would otherwise be thrown out and serve them to guests with expensive wine and cheeses.

But the truth is, crostini in our house rarely makes it off the cooling rack. Teenagers, especially 16-year-old boys, think it’s fast food and I often find myself making crostini with fresh whole grain baguettes because it’s a surefire way to get fibre into my son’s diet, which otherwise consists mostly of fructose as far as I can tell.

Crostini really are better made with stale bread, which is easier to slice very thinly. Drizzle the bread with a little olive oil and bake at 400 F until they are golden and crunchy (about 20 minutes).  When I manage to rescue a few before they disappear into the Gaping Maw, I like them with really old cheddar and a dollop of curried raisin jelly.

Lobster poutine

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This week’s New Yorker (the food issue) features a piece by Calvin Trillin poking fun at “Quebec’s Funniest Food,” which is, of course, poutine.

I am not a big fan of defining a people by the food they eat, let alone mocking them, but poutine seems to make Americans laugh the way  we all really should be laughing at bacon double cheeseburgers.

Let’s give Canada the last laugh this time with a recipe that takes poutine from the ridiculous (admit it, cheese curds and gravy on French fries is a bit funny) to the sublime.

I first tasted this poutine about two years ago at an Ottawa restaurant run by a family originally from Newfoundland.  Matching lobster and mascarpone cheese makes this a rich and delicious dish that easily crosses culinary borders.

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A soup with no name

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Roasted cauliflower soup with smoked paprika

A friend of mine who used to work in a hotel had a very odd job: naming the soup. I am sure he did other things as well, but each day he had to taste and name whatever the chef had put into the stock pot (my friend had some real reservations about some of the things that went into that pot, but that’s a story for another day). He didn’t know much about soup and would pick labels that were seasonal and hinted vaguely at the ingredients but didn’t make any promises. I seem to recall names like “Spring Vegetable Medley” or “Summer Surprise.”

I was thinking about him the other day when I cobbled together a soup from a few not-quite-right ingredients I had at hand: the wrong kind of stock, a cauliflower that had seen better days, not quite enough cream, a couple of small onions and some spice.

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Southern fried chicken

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Fried chicken

Whenever I think of not eating “right,” my mind immediately heads south. Maybe it’s all the barbecue or the bacon or the fact that southerners use gravy on just about everything, including breakfast. Or, maybe it’s because the food is just so good, I know instinctively that it can’t be good for me.

But, whatever the reason, when I have the urge to eat bad, I head straight for the land of cotton and crackling. I’ll have mine Dixie fried, please.

So it was last Sunday that I found myself  hauling out the deep fryer to make a heart-stopping pile of southern fried chicken. It was so good that even my 13-year-old-almost-vegetarian ate it (but only after I told her it came from Kentucky).

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