Leftovers #4: Curry Thingy

Sometimes there isn't much in the category of food in the fridge when you have teenage sons. Strangely, there are just bits of previous meals that seemed like the last forkful would be too much. Of course, later empty bags of chips or cereal boxes can be found in the house in places unexpected like under a couch, on the toilet tank or in a hallway. Maybe it's a half empty jar of peanut butter that I swore I just opened...

Anyway, there will be odds like a few mouthfuls of pasta. Maybe you have an end of an opened package of luncheon meat or sausages of some type. Sometimes, I find a package of frozen vegetables with a few tablespoons that is slowly becoming freezer burnt. Okay, that last one is often my fault. What do I do with this stuff. Maybe I am done with omelets or maybe I am just out of eggs. 

I get home and that is basically all I see aside from the pantry which seems to demand more work than I want to spend cooking for me. 

Now, I hate cooking for one sometimes but this is somewhere between cooking, warming up and being a little inventive. I call it curry thing. It requires that you have some curry powder or mix of some sort. Most masala mixes would work as well. 

The point is simple. Warm those few bits and pieces up with some liquid. Add a curry roux and serve it in a bowl with beer out of a can. Preferably some rye or red beer. Or a lager. Or whatever is in your fridge. 

The big leftover technique here is the thickening technique. Simple sauce thickener here. Mash equal part fat and flour. Mash in spices. Add to liquid that is warm. Cook it until you have the thickness you want. 

I usually use flour, butter and for this thing; yellow curry and a few spices. That's it. Like the frittata leftover thing, it is putting a bunch of ingredients together and making harmony with a sauce. 

Here are a few more in the series that I have been developing to deal with food waste. The first deals with spreads, sugars and syrups. The second with vegetable and vegetable soups. The third with odd bits into an omelet. 

More Leftovers:

Leftover Breakfast

Leftover Beet Soup

Leftover Oven Baked Omelet

Peanut Butter Stout & National Peanut Butter Day

So, January 24th is National Peanut Butter Day. Last year, I drank a Whitewater Peanut Butter Stout. I had received it from my sister as an oddity. I love stouts and I half promised to write about it. Then, the date came and went. No post.

Strange, even then that wasn't my first peanut butter beer. Peanut butter beers have been around for at least fifteen years. I know that some of you have heard about nut brown ales but no, nut brown ales do not typically have nuts in them. That is in reference to the colour.

My notes on the Whitewater suggest that I didn't like it but could see why there would be some that would. Whitewater is still a youngish brewery and several of their beer taste like it is from a brewery that is riding the line between mass and craft. They are looking for a beer that sells on the regular while trying to capture people that are fed up with the big breweries and their beer. So, they are capturing a market that wants better tasting mass market brews. That isn't a bad thing. I admire the brewery for doing that. It is smart business and something worth doing.

What I found was that the sweetness was out of proportion. I was able to drink almost the whole thing but did have to toss this last sip. It did come in a 473 mL can. Maybe that was just too much.

About a couple weeks ago, I had another peanut butter based beer from the Left Field Brewery. It was called Reggie Bar. Left Field focuses more on the more traditional craft beer drinkers with a side of progressive politics. The beer still has the sweetness and in a smaller can, it is easy to get through. 

I am still not sold on the value of a peanut butter stout. Full disclosure, I do drink pumpkin beer and tend to regret the ones that are super reliant on the spicing. So, I wonder if a more delicate peanut butter beer would work better for me. Some type of peanut putter IPA or pale ale might give the sweetness some counterpoint. 

I am glad that I celebrated because I got a badge on Untappd. I will always try the next one but I haven't found one that I want to go back to on a regular basis. 

Waragi is Gin?

I know a few things about gin. It is probably one of my favourite spirit. When I went to Belgium in my twenties, one of the things that I brought home was a bottle of henever. The Belgian precursor to gin. It was flavoured with juniper which is where jenever got is name. Of course, from the latin nam of juniper. 

So, when I heard about this Ugandan spirit that was drank straight at a slightly lower percentage than traditional gins, I was skeptical. I was pretty sure that it wasn't flavoured with juniper berries but I was intrigued by what was on the bottles. Pineapple and coconut. 

The coconut flavour reminded me of the coconut palm wine called toddy. A friend from India told me about this wine that they would make. Sometimes they would distill it. After the process, they call it gin. BTW, this is where we get the word toddy. It somehow became a hot toddy. 

Well, maybe that explains it. There is a historical connection between moonshine and gin. There was a gin craze where folks made bathtub gin and it didn't necessarily need juniper. It was a rough and ready way of making booze. This particular process was a hit in Victorian England. Of course, with the expansion of empire, India makes sense. Uganda also had to gain independence from the United Kingdom as well. I guess that solves that first part. 

Now, where it gets weird for me is that the definition of gin and the history still talks about juniper as being the deciding factor. Gin is flavoured vodka. But somehow this legal definition is probably only in reference to Anglo nations. I am not sure that I want to step into that nest. However, India and Uganda, do talk about these beverages as gin in the sense of illicit moonshining. 

In Uganda's case, Wiki talks about the high alcohol consumption and the eventual government sanctioned production of this gin. They passed an act aimed at keeping British gin out and protecting the local market. 

I was told that this is something of a regular drink to drink straight. The bottles I tasted were in 250mL containers at 37.5%. It could run hot in the alcohol. I tried them. They are flavourful and smooth. The pineapple one tastes like pineapple and not flavouring. If it is made from banana and millet where it is fermented and then distilled, that would make a lot of sense. It is a soft alcohol burn that tastes great on its own. Sure, you could mix it. It would make sense to add tropical flavours and citrus. You don't need to dumb it down or hide anything. It was seriously a great drink.

The coconut one tastes something like I would imagine toddy to taste like, except I was told by the person I worked with that toddy burned. This had none of that. It tasted like a more intense and refined coconut water. No fake flavourings. Another one that could just be drank like that. 

I can imagine that the 250mL would be something to grab and drink. It seems reasonable and doable. I have tried several exotic alcoholic beverages over my life that we don't see here. Some of them I like and many I do not. Every now and then, there is one that makes me wish we had it here. This is one of those. 

A Tale of Two Roasts

Cooking can seem like such a chore. Sunday roasts seem like some mythical thing that happens on television. I mean Netflix. Er, YouTube! My point is that is seems old fashioned and takes up a lot of time when no one eats like that anymore. We are all keto or low carb or whatever seems like a good idea this week.

Who boils potatoes and carrots and puts a whole roast on the table? Well, maybe we should think of roasts a slightly different way. For instance, this week I had a huge pork loin that somehow was magically on sale. It would be easy to cut it into pork loin chops and barbeque them. However, I have been making a conscious effort to try some older recipes and approaches to cooking.

I want to revisit some of these ideas and see if they are worth making or modernizing. What I did was cut the huge piece into two. One went into a slow cooker for hours with some onions, barbeque sauce, chili powder, onion powder, garlic powder, homemade hot sauce and cumin. When it is finished cooking, it can be used for pulled pork, base for chili or spaghetti sauce, an addition to salad... and it took little less than fifteen minutes to prepare. One roast that will feed me and my kids all week.

I will probably freeze most of it as I think I will eat the other portion. I sliced leeks to act as a raft so the meat wouldn't stick. I coated the roast with mustard, brown sugar, cloves and allspice. Put it in the oven at 350F for about two hours or until it is cooked.

This was one of my Dad's favourite way to eat pork. It is especially good when you use a shoulder roast and stud the meat with clove nails. The minty and spicy cloves flavour the fat and leave a tingle in your mouth.

Now, I have let it cool because my favourite way of eating this is cold on a sandwich. Yeah, you could do up some potatoes and carrots if you wanted a sit down meal but this is just as good with a green salad.

A roast is a meal that gives a few times. If you eat it will all the fixings, then it can make a fine family supper for Sunday. The leftover meat can be used for sandwiches, soup, a base for a meat sauce, or an addition to a baked omelet.

My verdict is that Sunday roasts should make it make to your table, even if you are doing one of those low carb diets, there is value.

Recipe: Buttermilk Pudding

I had some buttermilk in my fridge. I wanted to use it up and so this conversation with myself happened. 

Okay. I want to make something sweet... I have this buttermilk I want to use up. Used it for making pancakes. Damn, that was a good recipe.  

Let's check the internet... No, nothing quite right. Um, Let's check Fanny, Joy and Bittman... No?! 

What the hell?  

This should be super easy. I mean it is just a custard. And buttermilk is such an old fashioned thing. Why isn't there anything out there? Okay, maybe I'll try sour milk pudding.  

Got a few hits there but they are all so measured. I guess I'm going to have to wing it.

Turns out, old fashioned cooking doesn't always make it to the internet. So, I made something up. Before I share what I did, I guess I'll tell a little story about buttermilk. It is a tangy and viscous milk product that provides .... nah, my dad used to drink the stuff. He would be left with an odd smelling glass and a bit of thick white mustache. Mom called it sour, disgusting and like snot. She isn't totally wrong. I love using it in baking and in desserts. I have never quite got used to having it as a cold drink. Then again, I don't drink milk either.

So, I had about two cups of milk and it turned out I was short on vanilla. I looked at what I had in the cupboard and put together some flavours that I would thought work. Added some eggs and flour and cooked it until done.  I had added some orange blossom water and orange zest. My son thought it tasted like all the citrus. Combined with the tang of the buttermilk and the scant vanilla made it taste like something really fresh and flowery and nothing like a custard. Anyway, here is the recipe.

Orange Blossom Buttermilk Pudding

2 cups buttermilk

4 eggs

1/3 cup flour

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla or vanilla extract

1 teaspoon ginger

splash of orange blossom water (can omit and add extra vanilla or some other flavouring, but then you have to change the name. Rosewater would be good)

zest of one orange

Preheat oven to 350F.

Beat sugar and eggs together until creamy. Add flour and mix. Add remaining ingredients (buttermilk, vanilla, ginger, orange blossom water, and zest). Mix and pour into a pan. Bake for 45-50 minutes. Check to see if center is still liquid. I jiggle it. If it is still liquid, cook for another few minutes. I tend to use five minute increments. Once firm. Take out and cool. 

This has an interesting floral flavour when warm. I don't think it is for everyone's palate. But folks that I have shared it with like it even though they don't like custard textures. So, there is that. When cooler, the orange notes are more dominant. I think it would be good to serve with some type of simple syrup or maple syrup. 

A Brand New Old Way to Cook Potatoes

I wonder if my sisters will recognize this pseudo recipe?

One of my fondest memories is of Mom slicing potatoes onto the woodstove to blister. The slices were about an eighth to a quarter inch thick, just blackened and flipped onto the plate. A bit of salt to finish it off. When hot, the outside just bit your fingers a bit. My teeth would go through the salty, sweet layer outside to get to the more resistant and just cooked inside. It was better than potato chips or french fries.

If they had sat for a while when waiting for the whole potato to be cook, the potato soaked in the salt and they became more pliant. Like a sitting steak, it continued to cook. It never got to the softness of a fried or boiled spud. The texture is unlike any other potato I had ever had.

Eventually, the cookstove was retired for a more block like woodstove. For a while, we would put them on the electric elements where cool patterns would emerge. It was fun to try and create a nice crosshatch like you see on burgers.

This eventually caused problems with keeping the burners clean and the fire alarm from going off. Waving a tea towel every time you cook gets old fast. When you are young and the ceilings are more than nine feet, you have to jump and wave. I guess it was good exercise.

I remembered this snack and tried to recreate it for my Christmas dinner as the starch element. It worked. I used a non stick pan once and a cast iron another time. Both worked well but the problem of smoke still remains. So thick that the exhaust fan could not remove it quickly enough. However, the flavour and texture were as I remembered. The juices from the turkey burger enhanced the salty and starchiness. I wonder why I had never tried this before.

My next attempt will be using the broiler and seeing if I can get a good cook that way. I may have to cut the potatoes thicker and turn on the exhaust on high but we will see if we can do this.

My younger sister should remember this. We would wait together as Mom would only take a potato or two to create a good snack. My youngest sister might not as she was there in the transition from cookstove to electric. Her memory might not go back that far.

I bet she could recreate it though. She does have a fireplace. I wonder if putting these things on one of those racks for cooking... oh, or maybe the BBQ. Maybe a plancha.

I will get this down. It is worth doing. It isn't just nostalgia. This is a really old and good way of eating tubers.

Re-imagining a Holiday Tradition

When I'm talking about re-imagining a holiday tradition, I'm talking about a Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings. I love it. I am a single parent with two teens, one of whom is perpetually absent at supper time. This means that a traditional multi dish meals will be a lot of work for little gain.  The next day, the offspring will be gone and leftovers will be high. Sure, a midnight raid by the Ghost will  leave a dent in something. Never quite sure which dish it will be. Most likely desserts and turkey. Maybe the leftovers will be spared or ignored but the ever present peanut butter and bread dented leaving all the foods.

Then I am left with weeks of dealing with foods that are less than optimal and limiting my diet. More heavy carbs than ought to be eaten for weeks and made into such strange things as mashed potato waffles, turkey and stuffing sandwiches, and fried carrots. Anything to get them out of the fridge and not thrown out. If I am industrious and forward thinking, maybe a few will be made into the best type of tv dinners. But, just no. I can't do that any more. Partially because it seems so damn sad. Partially because I can't stand eating the same thing over and over again.

So, I came up with something a little more reasonable this year. Here is what I did. Made a turkey meatball or loaf or burger and added all the standard stuffing spices; sage, thyme, and whatever. I made this several times so the herbs and spices varied. It worked. Made some cranberry sauce. Added a little winter salad with endive and pomegranate that had a little orange maple vinaigrette. Served on a potato that was quickly fried. All topped off with a store bought biscuit or cranberry bread.

The good news. No leftovers. The better news. Ghost showed up the table to snarf one down before heading to his room. He ate everything. The best news. After making it several times, everyone who ate it enjoyed it. Even me.

Oh, I served it with a cranberry and orange sparkling water spritzer for the underage folks but added a little something something for the older folk.

I can get behind Christmas and Thanksgiving. I am looking forward to it and may even make this when it isn't the holidays.

Recipe: Savoury Cheesecake

I have been wanting to make a savoury cheesecake for a long time. I have searched for recipes and have only found a handful. One is a buffalo hot sauce and blue cheese one. I will get to it in good time.

In the meantime, someone gave me a large bag of onions and I recently tried some triscuits with rosemary...

But before that, I had to decide on a base recipe that I could use. I have tried many types of cheesecake; New York, no-bake, other kinds of cheese. The variations for recipes of these types without going into Italian and Japanese are way too many.

In my twenties, I had come across a recipe that was like New York but lighter and it rose a bit higher in the cooking. The closest I have come to it in recent days in the one on the No Name cheesecake lid. This became my starter recipe.

So, I put this here.

Onion and Bacon Cheesecake

Crust:
1 1/2 cups cracker crumbs (I used the Rosemary Triscuits)
1/2 cup  unsalted butter

Filling:
225g (1/2 lb) bacon fried crispy, reserve fat
2 or 3 large onions, fried in butter and caramelized

1 pkg (250g) Cream Cheese (room temp)
1 pkg (225-250) goat or sheep soft cheese (room temp)
4 eggs
1/3 cup cream or milk
3 tbsp of reserved bacon fat

Preheat Oven: 325F

Make crust. Make crumbs if you don't have. Mix crumbs with butter and press into a 9" springform pan. Bake on middle oven rack until golden. 12-14 minutes.

Make filling. In bowl, mix with an electric mixer, the cheeses. Beat until very creamy. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Scrape down sides. Beat in cream or milk. Add bacon fat. Fold in bacon bits. Fold in onions to taste. A good guide is that every bite will get a bit of bacon and onion but not too much of either. Pour mixture into mold.

Bake. Bake on middle rack for 20 minutes. Reduce heat to 300F and then bake for another 20-28 minutes. It should have a soft jiggle. Warnings to not overcook. Yadda yadda yadda. Turn off oven nd let it sit with door slightly ajar. This is supposed to stop it from cracking. Omit this if you need the oven.

Cool.

That's it.

Other notes: I liked serving it with applesauce. It tastes like french onion dip or a refined cheeseball. A little slice goes a long way. Would be great as a first course with other cheese or with some fruit or fruit jellies. Jalapeno would work.

The crackers don't matter as long as they are savoury. I like the rosemary as it added some bitterness to cut through the fat. I would mess a bit to get it fluffier. I avoided adding sugar due to the onion sweetness. I could definitely see using a spicy sweet glaze.

All in all, I have made this twice and would do it again. Using different cheeses like ricotta or cottage would change the texture and bring some more interest to it.

Drinking Coffee from Elsewhere

So, now that I am back writing, I often need a little pick me up to keep going. Okay, not really. I needed a hook for this post. I have had a few coffee from elsewhere that I have been meaning to try. Many countries have their own obsession with packaged coffee of some ilk. None are more serious than the Japanese.

People I work with know this about me and I had four packages of coffee to try. Two of these came with their own pour over method included.

The first one I tried really should have been the last one. It was the best of the bunch and came with its own filter for pour over. Of course, it was from Japan. Drinkable out of the pack without adding sugar or milk. It had the words Blue Mountain on the package. Not sure of the providence but it is good. It produced a good bloom, That is a fancy way of saying that you pour a bit of hot water to start the process and off gassing will produce a bit of bubbles on the surface and then you can continue to pour the hot water.   It easily beat most standard coffee shop coffee and most perked coffee.

Standard Vanilla Latte from Starbucks. It coats the tongue and has an odd bit of bitterness. It is better than most flavoured instant coffee. But it bears as much resemblance to coffee as most instant coffees do. It is not something that I would drink as a coffee and maybe not as a hot chocolate replacement either.

Yup, that's Starbucks

Sweet Christmas. I think this was an Indonesian find? Like T-Rex's Get It On, this was 'dirty and sweet/clad in black' but I don't want to make this my girl. Like the mentality required to make that type of statement, this is a taste from the 70's and it is not mine. A few sips causes tinnitus and then woopsy on my tongue. (Hey, I'm reading from my notes at the time and putting words around them.) At the end, there was sludge. Lots of it. So, yeah.... Nope.

Indonesian coffee

This last one was earthy and roasty. It tasted like coffee! There was little to no bitterness. It bloomed well but there was a leftover taste of pencil shavings. This may have been due to the temperature of the water. This one didn't need any sugar or milk either. Another Japanese pour over coffee. This one was bought in a gas station but was better than any coffee I have had in Canada from a gas station.

Earthy, toasty

So, I was glad to have tasted a bunch of these coffee from other places. It is strange how it can put what you drink into perspective.

I could talk about the guilt associated with single package coffee and maybe someday I will write that post. These were gifts and meant well. I appreciate the small tokens that are brought back for me from trips. Unexpected. And I can honestly say that the experience was a bit more varied that I expected.

Thanksgiving (Canadian)

So, I got invited to a Thanksgiving by some Americans through my partner. I couldn't help but tweak the noses of the guests. I had an inkling that there were days of thanks that existed before the so-called American Thanksgiving.

I knew about the Order of Good Cheer (L'Ordre de Bon Temps) instituted by Champlain in what is now Nova Scotia in 1605. Basically, it was a drunk fest carried out in the winter to prevent scurvy. Riiiiiiight! More likely a good reason to party to prevent them from going stir crazy. That is before the first Thanksgiving in United States of America in 1621. Was there even an earlier date?

According to some historians, there is a feast of Thanksgiving made by Sir Martin Frobisher in 1578. He is the guy that brought fool's gold to Europe and got a bunch of people excited to go. Also, another fool looking for the Northwest passage. He had tried two times before and was trying again. He was thankful that they got that far and weren't dead yet. That's something to be thankful for, I guess.

There had already been Thanksgiving days before. Monarchs were thanking the Lord for victories in wars and stuff, so it wasn't strictly the harvest festival that we attach to the day now. Even on that strict idea, there were already folks here who celebrated the end of the harvest.  Maybe it was the last big blast before winter. (Nah, see Champlain above. It wasn't all his idea for the feasts. I seem to recall an article in the Believer or maybe Lucky Peach which suggested part of the idea was from the indigenous folk.)

Anyway, that all predates 1621. The argument was that was the first date that a harvest festival by Europeans with the indigenous people exist. I call foul. Hell, there is American contention over that date on whether there was a church service or not. Always moving goal posts. But in Canada, we have our feast earlier in the year and probably earlier in history.

So, from some accounts, if we use Fool's Gold Frobisher, there was a meal of salt beef, mushy peas and biscuits. What the hell could I do with that?

Test Pie. See below for the rest of the story

Well, there is meat pie. Instead of a recipe, I am going to put together the dish in front of you. Couldn't find salt beef, so used corned beef. I already wanted to make it more or less period without adding a lot of modern frills, so no onions. Corned beef does have black pepper but black pepper isn't from the "New World". Seems funny in this day and age to say things that New World, so we will stop with that. Most spices were from North America, South America, and a lot of the islands between the two. So, it was just corned beef. 

Corned beef with a gravy

Remember they used to have barrels of this stuff on ships. I remember seeing corned beef in plastic pails labelled salt beef. Just couldn't find it this time round. I should have went to the Newfoundland grocery store. I'm sure it still has the stuff in stock most times.

The cooked corn beef 

So after that was cooked, I made a gravy with butter and flour roux and added the water that I cooked the beef in. It had salt, pepper and all the good stuff from the beef. 

Tasted good just like that. I could have added mustard and maybe some vinegar but wanted to keep it super simple.

Mushy peas next.

Mushy peas. They aren't quite what I thought they were. They are dried split peas that are soaked and then cooked. Add some salt and butter and there you are. They were starchier that I thought and were very hearty. I could imagine how this could be a feast food when combining with meat and fresh bread. But my, is it heavy. If you cook the peas too much, well, that's your Habitant soup in a can. I have some of that. Homemade but still pea soup. Like it but it isn't something that I would say is a thankful dish unless you are cold, spent a long time on the water and almost died. 

The biscuit topping uncooked

And finally, a biscuit crust. Simple biscuit recipe. Not much to say. I use this often on leftover meats like turkey or chicken. Which reminds me, that is something you can do with leftover turkey. Maybe this isn't a late Thanksgiving post but rather a prescient leftovers post. Hunh! Yeah, you are making this for supper this week. The whole thing takes as much time as to make the biscuit mix and cook it. (350 for 45 minutes plus prep time). About the same amount of time to get your kids away from video games or television. 

After all that. I didn't take a pic of the final coming out of the oven. I could take a pic of the two leftover pieces in my fridge but that is unfair to it. Seriously, try something like this with your leftovers. Really good. 

Liver.

Yup. always appetizing...

So, I had this bit of liver...

Stories I could tell:

Story 1:
Reminder of family: I used three pounds of liver that is one of the few things left over from my separation of three years ago this year. I stopped cooking family food for a while and this is part of me getting brave again. A healing thing as we gear up for the divorce proceedings.

Rejected: Two dismal. Yeah, yeah, another father makes it through separation and divorce by cooking. Boo-fucking-hoo.

Story 2:
Childhood reflections: The coppery smell and taste of liver reminds me of my dad. He liked liver and onions and would make it on occasion. I can remember how he cooked it and how I didn't like the smell. I would recognize that as an ethnic smell  now. And the taste -- even though it shares a flavour with fresh venison, I never got used to it.

Rejected: Maudlin and too often a goto for me.

Story 3:
Health benefits: It is good for you. Especially if it is free range, grass fed and organic. When I was growing up, we just ate the liver from the cows that were raised on my grandmother or my uncle's farm. No such thing as this high falutin' labels. Things were better. Liver is good.

Rejected: It is such a crock of shit with this foodie fascism and the weird sanctimony that comes with the fetishism of organic. The reality is that only middle class and above can really eat like this in the city. It is false to pretend that I would be eating this without the fact that it came from a meat order thrown in because no one uses liver any more.

Regardless. I took the liver and made it into a pate. It was seasoned heavily with allspice. This slab of fat was used in making Bahn Mi sandwiches and used by itself for bread and crackers. The thing is; it made a lot. So much so that there is still some in the freezer waiting for me to try to do something with it. I may try cutting it and frying it while it is still frozen. I think it could work like creton.

It has a strong coppery flavour and it is hard to miss that it is liver but in a good way. I guess I will have to try it and see.

Book Review: Pantry and Palate

This won't end up being a book review so much as a bunch of notes to take away. Full disclosure: this is my partner's friend who wrote the book. It is an Acadian foodways cookbook. I would recommend it for anyone who likes those recipe books from churches but would like a professional eye and curated approach.

This is definitely a foodways book. It is a helpful preservation and understanding of how a particular regional cooking style is rooted in the area. In this case, there is also a sense of history of how the dishes progressed. There is a history of a dish if you know how to read it. For me, it was a bit like stepping back into my childhood with recipes that may seem old fashioned but are really more about how one cooks with a less modern approach. There are techniques and food that have been tossed out because it isn't one that the consumer wants. All meat, no trimmings kind of thing.

It is funny that we go to restaurants to get foodstuffs from recipes that were common and deemed to be so common as to not be worth saving.  By common, I mean the sense of pervasive and of the lower class. Blood sausage (boudin noir, boudin blanc), headcheese, and potted meat being three things that are now often praised in modern restaurants. It is as if a chef has a better grasp of taking bone, gristle and blood and transforming it more safely and in better craft than the grandmothers of old. It is more likely that as we have stopped doing our own butchery from yard to table that the system has made these ordinary and common things dangerous.

This book stirred up a bunch of thoughts as the author worked towards taking the scraps of old recipes into modern recipes. Most older recipes are written with the idea that you have some ordinary skills. A lot of these skills are no longer passed down or taught. Head cheese mentioned above had very little in the way of a recipe or what you do with the head you have. I guess nowadays, there is youtube and the Food Network. But how do you even know these things exist? 

On page 6, there is a cry to bring back home economics in the sense of  "cooking with limited and specific ingredients and techniques". I wonder if part of the reason this has been left out as not being necessary in a largely middle class milieu. If this was framed as a social justice issue combining effects on migrant workers, environment and anti capitalist, would it become a sexy subject again? Could those who are not of the working class get behind this as a necessary skill? Since a high school education is way more common now, these skills would also help those of the working class without creating a destreamed and stigmatizing environment.  Doing domestic duties has gotten the short end of the stick as being not a first choice but it seems to me that is a bit of classist statement. Food Network has done a bit to bring it back into the middle class but I'm not sure it has gone all the way. I'm sure there are many blog posts to be written about cooking and feminism but this isn't the place right now.

Authentic. That word. However, on page 9, the working definition for Simon Thibault is 'Appreciation, observation, and a keen ear for what a dish is telling you...'  Not sure I could add anything here. It is just good to hear that said out loud. 

This book covers:

Preserves and includes pickles. I make a lot of quick, fresh pickles and there is a helpful hint that any fresh pickle can further preserved by canning. I will have to test that theory sometime as my worst fear has always been botulism, especially with low acid goods. My dad's canned meat sometimes worried me. I wasn't worried enough to say no to the meat but I haven't tried canning my own. 

Breads.

There is a recipe for a black bread that rings of stories from my dad about this thing that my grandmother used to make. I had thought it may be closer to the Bavarian black bread due to our history of coming from somewhere in the Austrian empire before the wars during the era when Poland was partitioned but maybe it is closer to this rural Canadian thing. 

Lard.

As it so happens I have some flake fat and suet in my fridge right now, so the idea of making lard has been on my mind. It is nice to see a modern recipe for making it. I should see if I can make this. 

Tete de Cochon.

I remember walking into my aunt's where there was a pig head being prepared. The smell is still in memory and strangely doesn't smell as bad as you would think. In some ways, I connect it to boiling laundry. It is definitely a better smell than boiled cabbage. At the same time, there were containers of blood for blood pudding. This is what was done fairly soon after a slaughter. The seasons tell you what to do. 

Soups, Sides, and Staples

There were meat pies of all kinds.  Fring frangs, fricot, rappie are all regional dishes but are recognizable as concepts to anyone who has subsisted on food that is fresh and farm based. Fring frangs are a version of potato pancakes, fricot is a stew and rappie is a potato and chicken pie. These all seem like a good way to use potatoes and old birds. Maybe that is just my reading but I can see this in a particular way. This reminds me of the chicken industry and the egg industry as being different things. But that is another rant and another post. Suffice to say, when an egg layer has to be culled, it does become supper somehow. 

Desserts

Includes three rhubarb recipes, date cake and a recipe for taffy.

I tried to include enough of the parts that I found interesting so that you could determine your interest level. I do recommend this for anyone who is trying to reclaim their family recipes. It covers off a good way to figure out how to read your family recipes. I must admit that a romantic notion of trying to understand the Kashubian recipes from Wilno came to my mind. I know that so many of the women there are getting on in age and that the young people are leaving without capturing that old fashioned way of eating and cooking. Maybe this is one way out of our odd way of food consumerism that has caused some issues? 

Feed the Resistance: Not a Book Review

Eating is political. A trite statement given the history of food and revolutions. From the army marches on its stomach to breaking bread as a sign of peace; food is connected to big movements. I have been reading a lot lately on an analysis of class and country music and queerness and it has left me with a whole lot of questions and ruminations. This has affected the way I look at many things including food.

A cookbook, "Feed the Resistance" showed up on a feed and I got it out from the library. The recipes are pretty quotidian but largely from different ethnic groups. I suppose it would be exotic but these are from the frontlines of the class battles. So, quick, cheap meals from their different backgrounds are the ordinary meals of the activist. Interspersed are little essays on all sorts of activist stuff. Yes, this is definitely a response to President Donald J. Trump but it is a kinder more measured way to respond. The kind of response that begins around the kitchen table and moves into streets, organizations and any type of response imaginable.

Let them eat cake

Like after a death; there are feeders and the fed. Sustenance is needed to go on when you can't go on. People are worried that things are as bleak as ever. But things often look less bleak after a meal and some tea. At least we can start with that because we have some tea and a meal.

The meal itself presents kindness to be shared or burdens lifted. It is almost as if the communal making of a meal and cleaning up gives us the sense that if we all work together we can change the world starting with our family. In today's age, that family can mean so many things. Families are more than the post nuclear family of a parent or two and whatever amount of kids.

You don't win friends with salad

I am beginning to explore that. A few weeks ago, I made a birthday meal for someone I care about greatly. Friends were invited to break bread. The spread consisted of donair, arugula and roasted veggie salad, potato salad, chocolate cake, and lemon goat cheesecake. The people around the table were all from so called intersectional groups. While that is a fancy way of saying that there is a bunch of shit happening from different directions, it sometimes misses things. Class is one of them. Why bother with talking about class and food? Well...

Activism is often lead by the middle class as the lower class is too busy struggling to go to protests or trying to change the world. What can be done to help? How can we bring in the voices who need the change?

Well, some of the essays in the cookbook have ideas. Ideas that I think could help around the table. In this meal, there were people from different walks of life around the table and there was a way to practice some ideas. The essay "Ground rules to organized activism" suggests four things; Assume best intentions, One microphone, Progressive stack, and Non-Martian clause. Roughly speaking, set a safe place for everyone to make mistakes while having a chance to speak especially those who don't and use plain language. That means everyone gets to speak from their experience. That means EVERYONE. I think I would love to have people from radically different lifestyles sitting and breaking bread.

Out of witty salad quotes

In other words, I am going to start having dinner parties with a variety of people around the table to see if we cannot change some things. Start small and work from there. For instance, this time, one of the guests talked about how she would get extra food from work and not be able to use it. I told her to bring it over here. If there was a lot, then I would cook it all and give back some. So far, there have been some bags of food that show up intermittently but I am keeping in mind one day there may be a bigger pile. I have shared whatever food I make from these bags. It is making a difference to at least two people.

Also, I'm thinking about buying a bushel of tomatoes and making a sauce. I'd like to have some people over for pasta and then sending them on their way with some sauce and a few ideas. We will see if I can make it work but it does seem like a start. Imagine having discussions on sharing while around a table. No pressure to act but rather a human discussion on what could help. It may help the trading of pet sitting for food or a place to stay for a couch surfer. I don't know what could come of it but being open to it would be a good thing.

Another essay exhorts to not to try to do it all: Choose something you can be a leader on, something you can follow and something that is a habit. I'm going to work on this idea for a bit and see if it leads somewhere. In the meantime, maybe I should write more about the politics of eating and preparing food. I'll let the food system issues work themselves out while trying to figure out how to feed my friends and family.

East Coast Donair

Flip, Flop, Fly

Tale of two cocktails (Candy Cane Eggnog on the Right, Homemade Eggnog on the Left)

The weather has turned cold again and I get to writing. Been messing 'round with something akin to eggnog but with a lot of alcohol. I made a few drinks while watching 'The Saint', which is a reboot of a franchise I watched as a kid. I remember the lead character as brash and refined. A smooth show where a thief and rogue worked the fine line of being bad and doing the right thing. It helped that Roger Moore starred and later became Bond, the government version of the Saint. It was romantic and suave.

This might seem like a digression but I assure you that it ain't. On this snow filled night and the descent of the thermometer, I took some Forty Creek and worked it into the experiments I have been doing. I took the modern equivalent of an eggnog, namely PC Candy Cane UHT eggnog, and mixed it with the booze. I also took an egg, some simple made with leftover ham spicing, Fernet Branca and milk and made a flip.

Ham spicing before I simplified it

Okay, hold on, Hold on! what the f star is a flip?

We can go back and talk about this medieval beer drink mixed with booze and egg but that does no one any good. That is just pretentious and precious. I may do it someday to show how douche-y it is but in the mean time, I will try something, at least a little bit more modern.

A flip is basically, booze, egg and some cream. If you omit the cream, it seems that you can't call it nog. At least that is my close reading of the internet recipes floating around. My first flip, other than eggnog, was a few years ago where a bartender made me some type of brandy drink with raw egg. I recognized it and dearly wanted to try it at home.

The recognition came from a time in my teens where I would mix a raw egg into store bought chocolate milk and bask in its luxuriant goodness. In reality, it was probably a few weeks where I wanted to gross out my sisters. I would mix a raw egg into a carton of chocolate milk. After a few inadequate mixings, I stopped because the sliminess grossed me out. Anywho... The bartended drink was pretty good and it gestated or incubated or stuck around like a chestbuster (Alien reference, look it up you kids) and finally came to be this year.

First the basics...

2 oz booze
1 oz simple syrup of some kind
1 egg
.5 oz cream

Take it all and shake it for about a minute.

That is it. Super simple. The variations are endless. I have used rum, whiskey, rye, bourbon, and even mescal as the booze. For simple, I have replaced it with a sweet liqueur such as a coffee liqueur or a fortified wine and most successfully, a simple syrup made with that packet that comes with a ham for glazing. The cream can be replaced with milk. It makes it slightly less smooth but it is very slight in the change.

So. I wondered. Does it matter with this raw egg thing that I am doing? Is this just another move to show that I am some type of bar star? There was this candy cane eggnog at my local Valumart that was half price because, well, Christmas is over and the eggnog market bottom has dropped out. Half price eggnog.

I took 1.5 oz of that and 2 oz of Forty Creek. Added it to some ice and shook it for about a minute and poured it into a glass. The pics show two glasses because I was going all whiskey glass and then took a left to a coupe. Regardless.

I took 85g package of glaze, added twice as much hot liquid to make a simple syrup. That is 170 ml for those that don't like math. I used .5 oz simple, .5 oz Fernet Branca for the mint flavour and .5 oz milk. Added an egg and 2 oz Forty Creek. Shook that up too.

There were some differences. Some were obvious. Take a look at the picture up top.

First, the egg based one was smoother and richer. Made sense. Secondly, the egg one made almost two drinks due to the volume that the egg made. Also, made sense. The other differences were that the spicing was more pronounced in the egg and glaze based drink. I was expecting that the flavours on the store bought eggnog would be better and more pronounced but it turns out that the thinness and the spicing didn't hold up to the homemade.

I have been drinking some variation on this drink through fall and will probably continue to summer. If I was using store bought eggnog, I would adjust the spicing. Really, though... it is so simple to add egg and milk or cream, I can't see myself going back to store bought eggnog. As long as I mix it up enough and don't get salmonella, I'll keep on doing this.

BTW, here is where I got the name of the post from....

Failure: Okra

I suppose you could take lessons from your life and apply them to the kitchen and I suppose that you could do the reverse. I'm not sure it does anybody any good to try and take grand views of everything but here is my story.

I had some stuff in the fridge and tried to make something and it failed. There were numerous hints along the way but I either ignored them or thought I could work with that. It didn't work out. The end. That's the way this experiment went but it could've went many others. I write this as a warning to others who would ignore experiments that are going wrong. Our demise is often written in our beginnings.

Let's reboot that. I had some okra that I discovered in my freezer and remembered how good it was. It was fresh from the farmer's market when I froze it. I didn't rightly remember the date it was packed away. Was it from this summer or maybe last? This was like found treasure. It was like a forgotten friend coming from a trip with exotic treasures like a book written in some forgotten language. Being the kind of person who is okay with stale dates and 'aged' food, I thought I would give it a chance. Nothing bad could happen.

Mistake #1: If you are unsure of a frozen good, defrost it and taste it before making it the main ingredient.

What could I do? I always liked tomato and okra, so I would make one of southern dishes that I always feel slightly guilty about making. The food itself is entwined with its racist undertones. Okra was one of the veggies that would provide comfort for slaves. ...and you should always make sure there is at least one downer in blog posts for the redemption arc.

So tomato and okra stew it is. I looked in my pantry to discover I did not have the requisite canned tomatoes but thought I must have something to make do. A can of tomato paste and maybe that can of Manwich that I bought for the boys (and secretly me too). I put that in the pot and got all proud of my improvisation. Shit! Did I put onions and garlic as a base? Argh. There are many false starts. It is easy enough to backtrack at the beginning.

Mistake #2: Even when improvising, make sure you have tools and ingredients at hand. 

Out came a separate frying pan to try and correct this slight misstep. Added some ghee and habanero oil that I made a while back and things were looking good again. Wait. Did I put a whole can of tomato paste in that? Back to tasting the liquid. It was thick and overly sweet tomato like. My gosh and darn, I said. How will I ever serve this to anyone? Okay. I have this. I added some beer to bitter it and some vinegar from hot pickles that I had made. There were some good ingredients going in here. Some prime bits of love from my hands. This could fix it!

The sauce had turned around slightly. It was tasting more balanced and it almost resembled a spicy tomato soup I had made once. This may be okay. The slight off flavour could be balanced with the okra. This was going to work. Maybe.

Mistake #3: Sometimes give your doubts a little room to explain themselves. You have built up a lifetime of experience in some areas. If this is one of those areas, listen and figure out what is going on. Now is the time to plan and fix it. 

Okay, in went the half defrosted okra and it smelled pretty good for the next few minutes. I sat down at my table with my laptop planning how I was going to write a triumphant post on how to work with a recipe and improvise to great results. Then something started to come my way. A wet musty smell of vegetation and despair. Was my kitchen scrap pile going off? No, I had taken that out this morning. Sniff, sniff. Oh.

I tasted the tomato liquid that had once been saved but now was lost. The off flavour was more present. Raw tomato paste and bitterness. It had been joined by the rot of green and then freezer burnt taste of nothingness and the abyss. I spit the first sip out into the sink and shook my head. My taste buds were off. That was it. Went back for a second taste. Nope.

I put the spoon down with wide eyes. I could say I was in disbelief but that would mean that there was something to be let down by. There was nothing redeemable. Like a long time lover saying that they had never loved you, this soup went well past the ability of incredulity and into the waiting arms of incomprehensibility. The Lovecraftian and existential crisis of my abilities of a good homecook had finally come to a head. I should lay down my tools and walk away from the stove and never return. I sat down and took a moment. The enormity of my project and its ruinous end had still not taken hold.

The bubbling horror could be heard laughing at me from the kitchen. Each burble defied me to do something; anything to fix it. I realized that there is no turning away from the cosmic horror. The best way for me to preserve my sanity was to write a cautionary tale and implore others to close the door to this eldritch mess. I poured the liquid down the sink and disposed of the green tentacled blob of okra. Its gelatinous mess was punctuated by protruding stems. White seeds like eyes stared at me from the compost bin bursting out of the red gore of the sauce. There was no way I was ever going to forget this sight burned into my soul. I would be forever changed. I'm not sure of anything in the kitchen now. How did this happen?

So, I made myself a sandwich.

Lesson: Don't let a bad batch of something turn you inside out and to the edge of insanity. Make a sandwich and get on with it.

There were other lessons but really, sometimes you suck. I used a bad ingredient that I knew better about and thought I could make good. Most times it works but sometimes it doesn't. So what. I ended up making a delicious sandwich and a reasonable salad. Spent the rest of the weekend making roast vegetables for the week. A bad dish is just that.

My Week - 2017 - 6

Finally, I am a day late. After six weeks, I finally get to a point where I am a little late. Well, I guess the subject of mediocrity is a good one then?

I have had some excellent food memories; a dinner with my former spouse at Lemon Meringue, and an amazing night at Hoof are two where the food was excellent. There was more to making those nights special and some of my other memories bear that out. A Good Friday searching for rice pudding where it ended up being Kozy Shack, hot hamburger with homemade french fries and my kids' cookies. None of those foods go beyond average nor do they need to. By definition, most of our food is going to be average. What we hope is that our average is higher due to most of our food having something more to them. Soul or love is something that is often brought up as something that is in these moments. Maybe it is hokey but with Valentine's Day around the corner, maybe I will let that pass.

This all came about because I ate at Harvey's. There was a time in my life when Harvey's gave me somewhere cheap to go where I could get fresh vegetables. I had a few vegetarian friends who would just go in and get a bun with a bunch of toppings and veg on them. This week, I went in and had their braised beef. Braising is one of my favourite techniques but this beef seemed as if it was cooked in an industrial process and then added to a flavoured brown gravy mix. It wasn't special and it was below mediocre. I just wonder if at one time I would have accepted that? I don't think so because my dad used to eat home canned beef that tasted similar. He fried onions, popped the top on the canning jar, added the contents. Once they were warmed together, he would serve them with potatoes, normally boiled, and bread. I remember tasting the pickling spices that were added. Bright lemony pepper bursts that I would today know to be coriander seed, hot heat of black pepper and the mellow-sharp bite of onion. This too was mediocre food of a different variety. Ordinary but made with the idea of tasting of something and to put you through times when there was no fresh meat. Too much of today's food is just to fill a gap. Raise your mediocrity to something just a bit more.

Drank
- Gillian, a Goose Island brew that I got for a fraction of the price one day at the LCBO when they were launching. I'm not sure how I feel about a $35.00 sticker but I got it for a lot less. An interesting sour beer.
- Stone's Xocoveza. A surprising beer which reads gimmicky but tastes a lot better than that. It is the equivalent of a good Mexican hot chocolate. When they are bad, they are horrid but when they are good, you can't imagine not trying one.
- Finally figured out that drink I was talking about a few weeks ago. It is called The Industry Standard. It looks like diarrhea in the glass but is really a deceptively good sour.
- And my last thing that I thought was interesting was a Vietnamese dragonfruit liqueur that was incredibly vinegary and would probably be better served with a little olive oil and greens.

Ate
- A braised beef sandwich and poutine at Harvey's. The less we talk about it, the more likely it will go away.

Prepared
- Made a peanut sauce using a Thai recipe but immediately changed out ingredients; teriyaki sauce for soy, natural peanut butter for regular peanut butter, smoked maple syrup for brown sugar/palm sugar, and thai chilies for pepper flakes. Added to fried eggplant and fried cabbage

Thinking
- about what is Valentine's food
- whether I will finally break my food slump
- about this book that I read on cider, but that will be a review this week, hopefully

My Week - 2017 - 5

I am really regretting the name of this series. It doesn't quite do what I want in terms of creating something interesting. However, it does drive me to at least post once a week. I would be embarrassed to see the number creep by two. So, this is where I am. I had a bunch of bits and pieces planned but I am pre-empting it.

My son didn't make his program for high school and what I had planned seems to pale in comparison to what is happening in his life. He doesn't want to talk about it and wasn't interested in eating. That is a big deal. It is tough to want to help someone through something that they aren't ready to talk about. It is not the time to try and talk through what happened. He is too old to be comforted by a hug, platitudes and a kiss on the sore spot. He would rather sleep and be alone. So, I trudge to the grocery store to try and make some comfort. Nothing homemade, nothing complex. Something that will let him know that I care and that I kinda get it. So, hamburgers, fries and steamed veggies. Mostly mass produced but dependable. Hopefully he will at least eat something and realize that tomorrow will be different and there are some things in this world that don't change much. It may be some small buffer against the feeling that everything is wrong and always changing. The horrible feeling of not being in control. It is not time to point out what could be done differently. Now is the time to just be for a little bit.

So, horrible segue but change is also happening in food in Toronto. We have already heard about many closings in the past while of institutions. Add Dangerous Dan's to the list. At the corner of Broadview and Queen, it is being pushed by gentrification. Rents went up by 80% and they don't think they can continue to make a go of it. So, it will be closing at the end of May.

Big House Pizza is dropping a new menu starting on Monday. Minor changes to the menu with a few added pizzas and a meat sauce. I'm thinking, perversely, of ordering some of their veggie pizzas with this meat sauce.

Drank
- A great beer by a Cobden brewery, Whitewater Brewing, called Whistling Paddler. They also got called out for their sexist marketing by Ben in Ben's Beer Blog. Worth a read. And I remember tweeting about their can a while back.
- Some odd oolong tea that I had to add milk to. It is sweet and not sure how I feel about it. However, bulk barn had a sale and I can be a sucker for flavours I have not had before. Give this one a pseudopass. I think it will find its way into a dessert of mine.

Ate
- Neal Brothers has a take on Masala potato chips called Vij's Delhi-licious. Having had a few of these type of chips lately, my son likes this one the best.

Prepared
- Doctored white miso soup with some togarisa. I use that shit on top of most of my soups. So good.

Thinking
- Do we really need a coffee and tea festival?
- How much does locally roasted matter if the beans are sourced like everyone else's? Is it just to give some roastery jobs or is there some other value?
- The connection between emotions and appetite; sometimes I stress eat and other times, I cannot stomach any food.

My Week - 2017 - 4

Two weeks in a row where it almost feels like I have given up on food during a time when I would traditionally be more into it. January has been a month of beginnings and endings. It has been a mild month that is starting to get bitter and cold. These are the times when I normally hunker down and begin making soups, stews and other stuff for loved ones to keep the closeness as much as possible; a salve against the feeling of the winter half over.

This year, I invited some guests to celebrate Chinese New Year. It was a departure from the familiar past of planning a huge menu and making everything from scratch. I gave myself only a week to prepare for three guests. Made only a few dishes and used prepared dumplings for the rest.

It was uncomfortable for me and I made a bit of an ass of over apologizing for the quality of dumplings. Something interesting happened though, I had a good time. After the first few comments and the result was that unearned compliments were solicited, I gave up worrying. There is only so much that you can hear someone complimenting frozen dumplings that taste just okay. I mean feeling insecure is one thing but no one ripped my taste buds out of my mouth.

I imagine that the feeling was something similar to the one guest who leaving my house called me by someone else's name, only to text later with an apology. That is what January was for me.

There is a story that I remember hearing and I always think about it when I think about grace. A new boyfriend goes to dinner to meet his girlfriend's parents. It is clear that he is not of the same class. He is making an effort in his appearance. At the end of the meal, a small finger bowl with lemon is presented. He promptly drinks the warm lemonade. The mother without missing a beat also drinks hers.

Sometimes the etiquette and niceties of the table and eating food get in the way of enjoying the meal and the company.

Prepared
- pepperoni grilled cheese
- Son-in-law eggs

Ate
- Nothing memorable

Drank
- Toronto sake, smooth and silky with the dumplings
- My dunkel weizen. Decent. Not my favourite but a solid beer that went well with the dumplings.

Thinking
- Chocolate and sour? Do they go together?
- about posting about NOMA and its impact on homecooks
- eggplant and peanut butter together
- Naga pickle from Bangladesh
- Meyer lemons showing up again
- what exotic fruit to get my son