Joel Leonoff (Optimal Payments, the event's chief sponsor), and Number 43. I took this with my iPhone and was trying hard not to be noticed.
Even if you get to sit at the same table as a former president, as I was lucky enough to do a couple of days ago at an event in Monreal, you don’t really get to know him. Still, this is a food blog and I had lunch with George W. Bush, so, I am duty bound to tell you what little I can (and some of it has to do with food):
I thought I’d share part of an e-mail I got from L after she had read the post below. A light-hearted reminder that pragmatism is always on the menu:
“So, I will get chicken breast and romaine lettuce for dinner? And then we are going to the fitness centre.
Sorry I didn’t raise and kill the chicken myself but I had a busy day.”
A Large Black pig with the floppy ears that are characteristic of the breed
I have spent the last year or so trying to encourage everyone in my family to become closer to the food they eat. No small task considering that L won’t eat anything that looks remotely like it did when it was alive (nothing dead with eyes can get through the front door) and that our kids tend to think that food comes out of a box or a bag or, most to their liking, a can.
Up till now, I have been subtle about it, showing them over and over again that things can be made from scratch so they get familiar with basic ingredients rather than the finished “product”. This has met with some success. After insisting on store-bought premixes for months, my 13-year-old daughter now makes pancakes from scratch. And she’s pretty good at it. My 16-year-old son laps up broth like a thirsty St. Bernard even though he is fully aware that it is made with bones and, in the case of my chicken broth, a pound of chicken feet (I leave these out on the counter in full view before I start the stock). My kids now understand that making food isn’t always pretty (visualize the scummy foam you have to skim from the stock pot) and that sometimes you have to get your hands dirty to eat.
We’re about to crank up the heat a little by meeting the animals that will end up on our plates.
We eat pretty well most nights and try to stick to real food that tastes good. But Sundays are one of the few times in the week we’re all together for dinner and a little deviation from the norm is okay every once in a while. Tonight was one of those nights.
Chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes and country gravy with okra fried with bacon on the side. It’s hard to imagine this meal fits into any heart-smart cookbook. But, boy was it good. And an extra half-mile of nordic walking should take care of the extra cholesteral.
First, take a cheap cut of thin steak (anything that has already been tenderized in the grocery store will do – this is po’ folks food), take it home and beat it some more. You want it very thin and very tender. Dip it in a mixture of egg and milk (I use two eggs and about two-thirds of a cup of milk for four people. Dip the steak in the egg-milk mix and then coat it with flour. Do this again. Put it inthe fridge for an hour or so and the batter will stick.
The country gravy is simple – just a basic bechamel; melt one tablespoon of of butter in a pot, whisk in an equal amount of flour and stir in a cup and a half of warm milk. Simmer to thicken and grind in lots of black pepper.
Chop and slowly fry some bacon (I used three slices of organic Large Black.) Slice the okra and toss with a little flour. Fry the okra with the amost-crisp bacon.
Fry the steak to your liking (this should be well done or at least medium-well) in a big pan with half an inch of canola oil.
Let the steak rest on some paper towel, smother with country gravy and serve with mashed potatoes (also smothered in the gravy) and okra.
Call your doctor in advance and promise him you will eat well for the rest of the week.
L and I usually go out for dinner on Friday nights. We always go to the same place, a neighbourhood restaurant that has become an institution in this city. The food is solid North American diner food; nothing fancy, but fresh and home-made, if not healthy (I take that back, the salads are wonderfully wholesome). The diners are mostly regulars who wait to sit in the section of their favourite waiter. Ours is Sam, who rarely smiles, but always brings us the best house wine and who knows exactly what our kids will want, every time.
Because we’ve been going there for years we have become close to the owner, also an institution, who brings us platters of wonderful Lebanese food (he and much of the staff are Lebanese) that isn’t on the menu. We always eat too much and it’s always a fight to pay. It’s also the time that I feel closest to this community.
But this week I am fighting a bug and couldn’t face the best house wine or platters of food. Still, I wasn’t ready to go to bed hungry and I had had my fill of the turkey soup I made with the Thanksgiving bird. It also didn’t seem right to make chicken soup when there was still leftover turkey in the fridge. I was determined to make a simple, single-pot supper (L has been on me about doing my share of the dishes) that would rate close to chicken soup on the I’m-sick-and-I-want-comfort-food index. I settled on a basic beef stew.
I cut a small blade roast into large cubes (for some reason rustic food always makes me feel better) and dusted it with flour before browning it in a medium stock pot. When the meat was caralmelized, I added two bottles of a nice dark beer (porter), most of a can of tomato paste, a few gulps of worcestershire sauce, a tablespoon or so of Dijon, a couple of bay leaves and some salt and pepper. I shredded a russet potato that was going a bit soft and put it in to thicken the broth. While that was coming up to a boil, I roughly chopped a few carrots (why did I plant so many?) and a large onion. I threw in a handfull of mushrooms I had lying around and put the pot into a 350 degree oven for a couple of hours.
It didn’t come with the best house wine, but chicken soup has a new rival.
A multitude of wonderfully crunchy carrots are still to be found among the weeds that have prospered in my vegetable garden this year. The onions were puny and malformed, the tomatoes underwhelming but for some reason the carrots and beets thrived. (My guess is that cool, rainy summers are good for both carrots and weeds, but someone who knows about these things can correct me.)
I still haven’t figured out what to do with the beets (I am the only one who eats them) so they are sitting in the raised beds squeezed together (why thin?) among the stinging nettles and countless other unwanted plants I intended to weed out all summer. But the beets can wait; this is carrot week at our house and we’re putting them in everything from muffins (L’s doing) to soup and eating them steamed and braised with a carrot-friendly mixture of my home-made curried raisin jelly and chicken (this week it’s all turkey) stock (which is reduced to a wonderfully sweet glaze and poured over the steaming carrots just before serving.
The carrot hit of the week, however, has been a really simple soup with cauliflower and carrots made with the three or four litres of turkey stock a sautéed onion, a couple of cloves of garlic and a nice hit of hot curry. I purreed it all with an immersion blended and threw in a cup or so of left-over whipping cream for richness. Topped off with some toasted baguette and pine nuts (toasted with the baguette slices in a little olive oil), it was a satisfying dinner all by itself.
Now, on to the beets.
Thanksgiving at the lake is always a bittersweet end to the cottaging season. With the boat drydocked, the dock out and the Adirondack chairs stacked and covered, it’s tough to pretend that it’s just a really chilly August day. Maybe that’s why we close up on Thanksgiving weekend; cooking a full turkey dinner for 12 in the tiny cottage kitchen, making do with what’s on hand, makes me long for the bounty of my city pantry. At least until next spring when I will be pining to grill by the lake.
This year we had special guests – a pair of trumpeter swans sailed by and watched us prepare to haul the boat out. They weren’t at all afraid. We did not, however, see any of the wild turkeys that often hang around. Maybe swans know they have been off the menu since the middle ages.
I often don’t sleep well for a day or two before a big dinner party. I was up just after four on Saturday and decided to bake since I was keeping bakers hours.
“What good are the Scots?” my English friend asked the other night after a wide sampling of various beverages. I didn’t rise (much) to the bait as he listed the many faults of my ancestors , but I had to admit to myself afterward that he got me with this one:
“You certainly can’t eat their food.”
I grew up in a home where Scottish cooking dominated. And except for the odd semi-successful foray into something like Italian food, everything was cooked Scottish style – if it wasn’t boiled it was fried. When it was gray and limp or almost burnt, it was done.
Of course, those were the days when Gordon and Ramsay were just a couple of tartans.
Odd that the country with perhaps the world’s worst diet could produce one of the world’s great celebrity chefs. Too bad he moved to England as child – imagine the F word with a Glaswegian burr?
Anyway, for my English friend, here’s Gordon Ramsay in all his profane glory. Simply press the button on his forehead and pretend he has a Scottish accent.
Check out this story. The US Food and Drug Administration argues that the health claims made by the makers of Cheerios make the cereal a “drug” rather than food. – ska
http://www.canada.com/Health/Popular+Cheerios+cereal+drug/1591926/story.html
Meats, Roots and Leaves 