The December Hiatus

A thought:

"Our senses define the edge of consciousness, and because we are born explorers and questors after the unknown, we spend a lot of our lives pacing that windswept perimeter: we take drugs; we go to circuses...we pay hugely for culinary novelties...and are even willing to risk our lives to sample a new taste."  -- from the introduction of A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman, in brief (the original quote was a really long list).

I've got some interesting stuff lined up for the new year, so look forward to it.  I'm going to explore more than just radical kitchen manoevers.  The month of December has been very interesting: holiday insanity, Icewine harvest, and new research and reading on my part in between these things.  I have lots to build on, and I'm sifting for what's worthy to include and organize as blog content.  The fun won't stop: I'll still chronicle some of the culinary experiments (I'm now armed with a hand blender and a molecular gastronomy book thanks to Christmas).  I'm looking to enrich this writing, in short.

All of the sensory experiences that I've had in my entire life still exist inside my brain; they're just waiting to be triggered spontaneously or accessed through reflection.  I want to better understand how this works.  While some may worry that they kill the romance by removing the mystery, delving deeper on the subject holds considerable artistic and intellectual importance to me.  A musician can make beautiful sounds even if they don't necessarily know how it happens, but if they discover that process, does that not aid in further improving the quality of the music that they produce?  If I can take the simple perception of scents and flavours to the recognition stage, will it not improve the quality of that recognition?  

What experiences can I look forward to in 2011?  I can't wait to see, touch, taste, smell and hear.

I wish you all happy and safe celebrating on this coming New Year's Eve!  See you in 2011.

Melissa

Good Tastes

Hey all,

Busy week, great weekend so far.  Cooked a big steak dinner for two last night with some garlic and bacon mashed potatoes and mushroom/red wine sauce.  I did up the steak with a mix of spices, Calvados and fire, then added the juices to the mushroom sauce, it was pretty great.

If you haven't heard of Calvados, do some reading on it! Here and here.  Also Natalie MacLean (wine writer and author of Red, White and Drunk All Over) has this gorgeous-looking recipe posted on her site.  It's one of my most recent favourites, and goes down really smooth.

Be careful with all eaux-de-vie.  Be very, very careful.  It's deceitful stuff.  If done well, it doesn't have "fire from the throat to the guts" that you occasionally get from whiskeys (Irish), whiskys (Scotch) or some bourbons ('merican).  It's a clear fruit spirit, not a grain spirit, so it retains the aroma of whatever fruit has been the base of the distillation.  If aged in oak (like the Calvados), it goes down softly, all smoky and full of caramel and butterscotch tones, the fruity aromas from pears/apples/plums following closely, skipping while strumming pretty tunes.  I have had non-oaked eaux-de-vie; my teeth were instantly more flammable.

The hangover from too much eaux-de-vie will hit you like a shovel to the face.  Irish whiskeys hit you like a Chevy to the stomach instead.  Too much Scotch makes you feel like you've been buried alive, covered in peat, somewhere in the Highlands.  Following too much bourbon, it feels like a Texas chainsaw is working its way through the back of your head.  I love distillation.  It's wonderful.  But these creatures will bite you hard if you're careless.  Be neat about it (I don't like my spirits with ice, but I suppose this is just a personal preference).

Also I did some tasting at Ravine Vineyards today, we had some lovely offerings from 2007 and 2008 (especially loved the 2007 Reserve Merlot--what a gem).  We also got some sneak peaks at several wines soon to be released!

That's my little update for today.

Cheers!  (Be careful with the Calvados.)

Melissa

The Lovely Parsnip

Hey everybody,

I've been busy catching up with people and tomorrow is Strutt (Canada's Largest Wearable Art Show), so I thought I'd get a post up tonight about something I've become better acquainted with in the last few years.

The parsnip. 

(Oh, hooray, a root vegetable.)

But I've come to love it so much!  Especially since it seems to have a short growing season and gets even tastier from frost exposure.  That's good for chilly-ass Canada!  Here's the Wikipedia entry, and the CFIA entry, for more technical stuff.

It's related to anise, celery, carrot, dill, cumin, parsley, and a whole bunch of others.  It's a weed, essentially.  It's the root of the weed!  But lucky us: one day we dug it up and ate it.

It's kind of nice that carrot, parsnip and dill marry nicely as a soup.  It's got this nice fragrance to it that amps up any roasted dish or soup.  I've had equal luck using it in both, and I shared a recipe before for fried parsnip "chips"; so far I think that's my favourite way to cook them.

If you're unfamiliar with it, give it a try.  More raw parsnips have got a really pretty, floral flavour, and if tastes were assigned a "colour", this would definitely be "white".  It's clean.  It has a bit of peppery/bitterness (kind of similar to that of arugula) on the finish, as root vegetables tend to have, but when sauteed in butter with salt and pepper, caramelization does wonders to soften and enrich the flavour.

I want to try this recipe I found while surfing links.  I'll post when I find how it turns out!

Whew, lots of links in this one.  Now go get crazy with some parsnips.  Do it with style.

Bon appetit,

Melissa

Link Update Early...I couldn't resist.

This is a recent find I've made while sniffing out genuine, enjoyable food blogs: The Food in My Beard.

The recipe that prompted me to post this is right here.  OH MAN.  Does that ever sound incredible.

I'm off to a show in Oshawa tonight, cheers and all that jazz.  (Or, if it's more to your taste, all that heavy fucking metal.)

Peace,

Melissa

Then I thought, "Thyme to update my blog."

Okay, puns are something that I need in order to breathe, you can't take my thyme jokes away from me.  So get ready. 

I made a nice baked mac and cheese tonight.

I combined: boiled fusilli, diced leftover roasted chicken, sauteed mushrooms and onions (deglazed with white vermouth--almost everything I cook has booze in it), crumbled feta, grated asiago, and some chicken stock that I'd blended with 35% cream.  I also added some thyme.  All good things need thyme.

Then I put it in the oven at 350 until I felt like taking it out, and when I did, it was too runny.  So, I rummaged around for something to thicken it with.

Breadcrumbs?  No.  I don't like using breadcrumbs in much of anything, it's like stuffing your bra.  You want the real shit.

Flour? Then there'd be clumps galore.  Too late for flour.

Eggs?  Well, why not?  I remember a chef friend talking about a classic carbonara recipe where you mix the hot pasta really fast with a beaten egg, and it cooks while making a creamy sauce.  Was it the white, the yolk, or both?  I couldn't remember, so I just cracked an egg into a bowl, whisked it up with a fork, drizzled it into the hot baking dish while stirring, and then I watched for the result of my experiment.

It was magical.  As soon as I'd finished mixing the egg in, it did exactly what my friend had described: it was creamy and thicker than before, and tasted great.  So yeah, cool recipe.  Nice for a foggy night.

Another thing I wanted to mention about this was the thyme that I used making it.  (Thyme spent in the kitchen is well-spent, in my opinion.)  I have noticed this weird tendency I have to use fresh herbs in the winter, while not so much in the summer.  But in the summer, we've got tons of this stuff growing everywhere, shouldn't I be using it while it's seasonally appropriate?  What kind of local foodie am I?!

I've been trying to track what changes in my eating habits from season to season (this way I know what I can take advantage of, and when), so here's the best explanation that I can come up with right now.

In the summer, I make a lot of interesting dishes, usually distinct elements (sides) that could stand alone, but still have to harmonize for a meal.  I link them to each other by keeping the seasoning simple on each, S & P, a squeeze of lemon, a drizzle of some fancy oil or vinegar, or some of the ground spices I've got (coriander and paprika are favourites).  A sprinkle of this, and a shake of that.  It involves me reaching randomly into my spice cupboard, assessing whether or not including Roulette Spice will be weird, and then usually adding it anyway (cinnamon is the only one I eye warily: it is powerful stuff, and not to be trifled with).

In the winter, I tend to do lots of roasts, soups, stews, and baked stuff like I just mentioned. (I'm going for the two opposites here, just to start with.)  The old, homestyle one-pot meal.  When I first started learning how to took, this is what I made.  Beef bourguignon.  Vegetable soup.  Roast meat and veggies.   I'm a cheap bastard, so the "sprinkle this and that" approach means I go through lots of spices, applying them to a large mass of food.  Fresh herbs, though, are very flavourful and intense to me, so it feels like I don't have to use as much for the intended effect, and they make the one-pots look a bit prettier.  There's no picture with this article, because I baked tasty white slop for dinner tonight.  Comfort food is kind of ugly sometimes.  Another thing: using stuff like the cream and cheeses ("sweet" basic tastes) requires the balancing effect of bitterness, which is very easily achieved with the inclusion of the fresh herbs.  I could probably do this more creatively by using tea, coffee or chocolate (or bitters, themselves), but I just wanted mac and cheese today.

It's kind of cool that one of the first "seasonal cooking changes" that I really noticed was how I flavour the things that I'm cooking.  I'll revisit this topic again soon.  For now, I'm off to the Merchant Ale House for some fine beer.

Proost,

Melissa

P.S.

Thanks to some good feedback, I'm in the process of tweaking the layout here. Also I totally meant to make the trifle pun too.  I suffer for my art too, don't worry.

Links for Today

What up.

I missed putting stuff up last Sunday because I needed time to recuperate from Devil's Night, so here's some more favourite foodie places on the internet!

101 Cookbooks is a site I've happily wandered through for a couple years now, and shewhoeats is a food blog I've just started following.  Read through some of her back entries for a crazy recipe for caramelized white chocolate!  (This one requires some dedication, and fine ingredients.)

I love days off for a couple reasons, but one of them is definitely waking up at 12:30 PM, drinking a full french press of market coffee (during the week I just drink whatever we have at work, luckily it isn't stuff I want to drink very much of), and making an omelette of some kind.  O, the luxuries that I cannot afford during the week, because I'm not a morning person!

If anyone needs me, I'll be lounging in my orange chair drinking coffee.

Cheers,

Melissa

How to Dinner Party?

Hello again!

Two posts fairly close together means I have more tasty things to share.

Had a couple lovely folks over last night for a four-course dinner, done up veggie style!

First: I need to fill you guys in on something.  I couldn't get pictures before they disappeared, but here's a component.

Sliced dried figs and butter.

The Curiosities turned out fantastic.

Oh, right, I haven't told you enough about them yet.  Well, try this:

Take a couple handfuls of figs and chop 'em up, melt some butter in a sauce pan (medium-ish heat) and stir them together until they start to smell figgin' good.  (Yeah, I did that, and yeah, I'll pay for it later.)

Add whiskey (just whatever feels right, but I did a healthy couple ounces).  Your figs will drink it all up, and thank you for it.

Do you have butter puff pastry in your freezer?  (Or, if you're lucky, can you get your hands on some fresh stuff?)  If you can make puff pastry yourself, reading this blog is probably a lot like watching a kid make a "meal" out of Play-Doh and then proudly serving it up to you.

Anyway, if it needs to be thawed, thaw it.  Is your fruit drunk yet?

Good (what I'm trying to say is, there should be little to no liquid left.)  Take it off the heat, add two way overripe bananas.  Like, they're totally black and have been glaring at you from inside your fridge for a couple days.  These bananas loathe you.  But their insides are totally awesome, so let 'em have it.

Add a sprinkle of ground coriander and a splash of vanilla extract. I used this stuff from the Dominican Republic, which I'm pretty sure is rum-based.  I also have a really pretty Madagascar bourbon vanilla.  The cool thing about vanilla extract is that you can make your own: get your hands on some pods and put them in a jar with the booze of your choosing, you will have vanilla extract very soon.  Also you'll totally look like Super-Chef.

Mix it all up.  Slice the puff pastry to make 2 x 2 in squares.  Add a dollop of drunk fruit goo, and here's the sexy part.  Get some Danish blue, and throw a couple little crumbles in each one.  Close up the pastry into a little pouch, twisting the top closed (I always fuck up here: I get all excited and put way too much filling in, then they explode everywhere).  Put them on a baking sheet and into an oven at 350.  Check after ten or fifteen, the basics are: they should smell awesome and be golden brown and crispy.

Don't try to eat them right out of the oven, they'll burn you good.

Moving on to dinner! Here's a shot of my creamy spicy sweet potato and carrot soup:

 

Served up all messy-like! (This was my bowl, the others didn't have drips.)  I didn't have creme fraiche and the only fresh herb I had was sage, so instead I garnished it with a streak of paprika, a pinch of smoked salt (top right), a couple twists of black pepper (bottom left), and a streak of the ground coriander (man, I love this stuff way too much).

 

The stuffed peppers, before stuffing: the filling is grated feta and asiago cheses, diced green zucchini, black pepper, salt, paprika again, chopped artichokes, half a medium shallot diced, sliced giant green olives, and a couple spoonfuls of my roasted roma tomato sauce.

The sauce is made by roasting whole roma tomatoes at 200 degrees for a minumum of 8 hours (and this doesn't have to happen in one day, I had to finish roasting them on a second day).  Salt, pepper, olive oil.  When you take 'em out of the oven, remove the tomatoes, throw white vermouth in the pan and scrape all the charred bits off, then pour it into a sauce pan.  Dice up the tomatoes (just take the cores off, leave everything else: skins, seeds and all) and toss them in next.  Add dried oregano and thyme.

Here's the main course, the roasted pepper in the background.  In front is eggplant involtini, which is made by slicing eggplant with a mandoline (the slices should be less than 5 mm thick).  I mixed buffalo ricotta with more grated asiago, chopped fresh sage, dried basil, and my friends S & P.  Add cheese mix to the centre of one slice, roll one end forward so it's almost enclosed.  Take another slice and tuck it in, continuing the roll, add one more after that.  I pinned them together with some nice 4 inch skewers.  Pack the cheese in either end (some will probably fall out).  Douse them good with olive oil (they'll absorb lots) and roast them with the peppers for at least half an hour, or until the pepper skins start to shrivel.

I like this picture a lot.  (Even with the skewer.)

My friend Chantal made the dessert, but I'm going to try and get her to post it once I start sharing this blog around more.  In short, it was like cake and a buttertart made beautiful love with raisins.

Alongside these: A new, top-secret white blend we'll be releasing at Henry in the near future (components are Viognier and Chardonnay), which was a great mix with the Curiosities and the soup.  I had a bottle of the 1997 HOP Merlot that I grabbed from a re-release bin at our store.  It was a great meal.

The art of entertaining is something I started learning while I was going to school.  I had a lot of friends that had some from a restaurant background (whether serving or cooking), and they helped me realize a few very important things when having a meal in-house:

1. It's not meant to be a stuffy, overly impressive affair.  It is, however, not just any old dinner: so treat your guests to a couple little extraordinary things: good wine presentation, tea lights, linen napkins, whatever.  Don't make an exhibition of it, but make it special.

2. Do as much as you can the day before.  Like, everything.  Small prep can really lower the stress level, and you should be able to greet your guests and be entertaining without worrying about dicing friggin' onions.  You should never spend the party cooking or fussing with your whole kitchen.

3.  Dress for dinner.  Again, this is just meant to be part of the "special presentation" part, but I've included it separately because, aside from this being good etiquette, it also just makes you feel like a host.  So take a bit of time and get prettied up.  Don't wear fragrance.

4. Don't rush anything.  Last night we started with the nibbles just after 8 and I think we finished dessert at 11:30.  Take the time between courses, relax, chat, and enjoy the food and wine.  Speed eating is for your lunch break, not for this.

5. Always have on hand: a couple nice cheeses, extra wine, cash, and a local cab number.  It's not like I always say "Come for dinner, and I'll get you stuffed and drunk and then pay for your ride home," but it's nice to have some extra nibbles and drinks in case the night calls for it. Everyone drinks differently--I've gone through multi-courses on one bottle with one other person, I've also gone through four bottles with just one other person.  I like to offer the transportation, though, because three or four hours of eating and drinking makes anyone pretty relaxed and sleepy.  It might just be the ol' Smart Serve thing, but I'd like my friends to be able to come back and do this again with me.

Anyway, I think that does it for this one.

Cheers, and dinner-party on!

Melissa

Curiosities and Six-Hour Fragrance

Whew, it's been a few days.

I have been cooking for the last six hours straight.

I've balanced a sweet-potato and carrot soup for a little dinner party tomorrow night, I roasted some romas for homemade sauce (which I then finished with some white vermouth), I seared salmon, made parsnip chips, blanched asparagus and cooked spinach and cheese ravioli with a cream sauce for dinner.  Then, I wrapped it all up with the invention of a little morsel I'm going to name "The Curiosity".  (Wanna know what's in it?)

My apartment smells amazing right now.

The drinks of the evening have been a third of a bottle of 09 Sibling Rivalry Pink, and a wee splash of 09 Sibling White (I needed it for the soup, I swear).

Let's warm you up with some pictures, shall we...?  Forgive the low quality of the cell phone camera--my digital is in need of repair.  (I recently had this crystallizing moment where I realized I was a total foodie--I was standing in the kitchen in my underwear, snapping pictures of chicken parts in a roasting pan on a Friday night.)

This is why I love salmon (but only occasionally).  Because I've had it, I can feel the texture just by seeing that stripey, rosy flesh.  By the way, we've entered the "Total Food Porn-Out" section of this blog for today.

Okay, okay, don't yell.  I split the salmon so I'd have something tasty for lunch tomorrow, the veg and pasta ended up taking more of the spotlight (I got a budget, see?)  It was all tasty!  And remember the pepper story? (See entry #2)  Tucked in behind there are some very yummy parsnip chips, which are stupid easy to make:

Peel two medium-sized parsnips (I'd say these were about an inch in diameter, 6-7 in long).  Slice 'em on the bias. Get a heavy-bottomed, deep skillet onto some med-high heat and add a big hunk of butter.  Add parsnips.  Add sea salt and cracked pepper.  Toss until they start to brown, when this happens, cover with a lid and just go back and turn them twice or three times, add some olive oil after the first turn.  That's it, ya'll.  They probably take less than ten minutes to cook, easy-peasy.

(My recipes are not timed or measured, I go by sight.  It's more fun this way.  Good luck following my terrible, terrible directions.  Have a glass of wine to calm your nerves and go at it.  Be careful with the hot things and the sharp things.)

Salmon's just as simple.  Heat a pan (medium-ish), add fish.  Turn after a few minutes, add salt and pepper.  Add squeeze of fresh lemon juice.

Fresh ravioli--actually, most fresh pastas--cook in like a minute and asparagus in three (in my opinion, pretty much I just strain it as soon as I smell the pyrazines in the steam).  Combine 'em, grate some asiago and add a splash of cream, done.

Anyone who says they don't have time to make themselves dinner should be slapped until they need to be fed through a tube.  Just kidding, LOL.  Seriously, though, get a pan on some heat and chop some things, you'll have something better than that fugly-ass Double Down thing in a matter of minutes.   ...Any. Fucking. Day.

Here's some more photos--these are a little retro--from the saga of the butternut squash soup.  The sweet potato soup follows almost exactly the same principles (aside from the chicken stock, tomorrow's dinner party is vegetarian and it will be amazing).

Plain old roasted butternut squash with my pals, S & P.  Keep me away from this, or I will eat it all, and you will have no soup. Also: Butter for butternut.  No substitutes, unless you've eschewed all animal-related foods.

Peppers and garlic go into the pan next (the pan looks a little scary, but I have just one pan and it needs to be re-used for recipe components, 'kay?  Besides, the charring from the squash and sweet potatoes past added character.)  I know that glass, non-stick and cast all cook differently, but I think that part of knowing my cookware is knowing the alterations to make in recipes that I find.  If someone somewhere says 10-15 minutes in non-stick, I check it after 12 minutes in glass (peppers and garlic take a good 30 to really get their roast on).  But really, I just use my eyes and nose to tell me when to do things.  Mooooving on...

Dear food processor: I love you, and I love the butternut squash puree that I can make with your help.  Reader: if you compare this photo with the one from above ("before" pureeing, as it were), you'll notice that the quantity is...less.  This is not the food processor's fault.
 

Vibrant red-orange after pureeing and adding peppers and sweet potatoes!  This is when the soup got exciting!

Finally, slowly adding home-made chicken stock and 18% cream to the pot of pureed vegetables.  To this I added ground cinnamon, ground cumin, ground coriander, smoked salt, sea salt, cracked black pepper, ground white pepper, and two types of paprika (I have McCormicks and a hot Hungarian paprika), all to taste.  I have absolutely no issue standing in front of a pot of soup for a full twenty minutes, just tweaking the spices and seeing how the flavours marry.  Actually, I love doing that, it's why I spend so much time in the kitchen.  In this case, it was just as much to make up for the pre-soup squash gluttony on my part.

Curious about the Curiosities?  Wait and see, that'll be with the post that I'm going to do after the three-course dinner party I've got coming up tomorrow night.

Hint: there's booze in them.


...That's not a good hint.  The booze is whiskey (note the spelling), and there are figs present.

Happy cooking, happy nibbling/tasting/tweaking, and happy dining!

Melissa

Mushrooms that'll make you cream your jeans

...So use a plate, sillies.


Take about ten medium-sized cremini mushrooms and pop out the caps.  Scrape out the gills with a teaspoon.  Clean the stems well and chop finely.

In a bowl, take a few ounces of plain goat cheese, the chopped mushroom stems, some chopped walnuts, cracked black pepper, a sprinkle of ground white pepper, sea salt, grated asiago cheese and chiffonade a few fresh sage leaves and mix it all together.

Add the filling to the caps.  Take a few slices of bacon, cut into 2-3 inch pieces and layer a few of each over top of each stuffed cap.

Preheat the oven to 350ish and bake 'em until the bacon is crispy to your liking.

Eat, but carefully.  You will drip creamy stuff everywhere if you don't use caution.

Stuffed mushrooms are really a one-bite deal, though.



Other thoughts for the day: I've written a lot, so here's a taste.

I recently had an interesting sensory experience with music, where I sat and gave a full album my undivided attention and actually listened for what felt like the first time in a long time.  I felt that it had a lot of similarity to the occasions where people have had eye-opening experiences of flavours in food or wine, when I show them how to "properly" taste something.

I don't mean this in a condescending way; people often eat and drink too fast to really pay attention and savour what's there.  When they do slow it down, and recognize flavours, they show a mix of pride and awe.  Discoveries are totally wicked.

See, as children we seem to have acute senses, but as adults they deaden, in a way.  Really tasting is lost to simply eating, just as really listening to music is lost to simply hearing it.

I was all, "Shit, after all my ranting about people not paying attention to what they're putting in their mouths, I've been ignoring what I've been putting in my ears.  Oh my effin' gee, you can really do this with all the senses!"  What a revelation that was.

Once these things are recognized, it's hard to approach simple tasting or listening pleasure (used here as examples) any other way: we crave quality, not quantity, and rightly so.

That's all for now.  I'll continue to expand on this thought in posts to come.


 
I feel should mention that the squash and pepper soup that I mentioned in post #2 didn't even make it to freezing, all was eaten.  It's okay.  I'll make another: Lakeland Meats is selling butternut squash and pumpkins for super cheap right now.



Happy tasting,

Melissa

Sunday is Link Day!

Check the spot to the left.  There's a couple foody links there! 

Every Sunday, I'll throw new stuff here for your enjoyment.  The rest of the week (Mon-Fri), I'll do regular posts.

Cheers!

Melissa

How a Pepper Stole the Spotlight from Pork

Good Morning!

(It's almost 11 pm.)

I had a friend over for dinner last night, and I cooked up something neat, so I thought I'd share.  I did roasted pork chops with sweet potato, and stuffed red peppers with white and green asparagus vinaigrette.

The chops were kinda small (but from a really great butcher), so I decided to do the peppers as a last minute thing.

They actually become the focus of the meal.  Here's the recipe:

Put the oven on at 375ish degrees C.  Bring nice fresh pork chops (I like sirloin cut, but I had centre chops last night and they worked fine) up to temp.  Rub with ground black pepper, coriander, cumin, paprika, ground white pepper, and smoked salt.  Heat a skillet over medium-high, melt some butter and chop sweet potatoes (red-skinned potatoes are awesome too!) about 1 inch x 1 inch, tossing with salt and pepper until they start to brown.  Layer in the bottom of the baking dish.

Sear the meat on both sides, add to baking dish on top of the potatoes.

Take two red peppers and cut the stem off like a jack-o-lantern (hey, this is seasonally appropriate!)

In a bowl, combine 3 or 4 chopped giant green olives, one small shallot diced, half a greenhouse tomato diced, about 2 oz crumbled feta, black pepper, half a medium-sized diced green zucchini, salt, and a pinch each dried oregano, dried thyme and dried savory.  Add grated asiago if you love cheese as much as I love cheese.  (Hint: it's a lot!)  Mix the filling, stuff it in the peppers, and then put in a baking dish with some olive oil.

Think, "Something's missing," and look around in the fridge.

See bacon.  Remove bacon from fridge.  Slice 3 or 4 pieces in half and then layer over top of stuffed peppers.  Bake in oven until bacon is crispy and pork chops are showing just a little bit of pink inside (medium-well).

The asparagus vinaigrette is easy too, just blanch trimmed white and green asparagus, toss in the pan that you seared the meat in with some butter, then add a drizzle of sherry vinegar (leeks done this way was one of my favourite things to make this summer).

Stuffing vegetables with other things was the greatest idea ever.  These things completely overtook the pork as the centrepiece of the meal.  It's okay though, I like vegetables!

Bon appetit and good night,

Melissa

Fall Love Affairs

Welcome to issue #2.

(Well, this one's gonna be sorta short.  I've got laundry to do and a beautiful autumn day to get out and enjoy!)

Today is my only day off all week, so I've spent since last night just cooking and eating.  Whether I stay in Toronto or St. Catharines, I usually tend to do this: just taste things that I find in the markets.  It's a tour of flavour.

Last week, a significant other and I went to Kensington market (in the area of College & Augusta sts), and bought cheese--so much cheese--some produce, and a gorgeous lamb leg roast.  We just nestled it in a glass baking dish with diced peppers, Gala apples, and shallots, covered in various spices, and it was gooooood.  The greatest thing about the roast?  The perfume that filled the apartment.  Who needs flowers or air freshener?  Give me the smell of roasted meat and veggies any day.

That same afternoon, I had the wonderful opportunity to visit the Riverdale Farmer's market in Cabbagetown, where I tasted hot pickled beets, pumpkin spice cupcakes, wildflower and ginger honey, all under a bright blue autumn sky.  See, if I'm doing these tasting tours, I'd love for them to be on days like this all the time: temperate, sunny, surrounded by colour.  Things never quite have the same intensity of flavour once you bring them into a sterile environment: look at how you feel under fluorescent supermarket lights or in tasting rooms, vs. an open air market or someone's cozy living room.

One wine can be brought and tasted in ten different locations, and each time it will be a new creature.  This can sometimes be really negative.  The wine you tried and loved at a friend's place is suddenly a quiet, dull character or a big tannic monster.  Why does this happen?  It's something I'd like to explore; the way different processes in the brain can affect flavour and aroma stimuli--but that's another topic for another day.

Food can be transportative.  I roasted up some gorgeous butternut squash (and couldn't stop eating it as I worked with it for soup, ah ha ha ha, save me from myself), some garlic cloves, red and orange peppers, and a sweet potato.  I blended each in the food processor, made chicken stock, combined everything and added some 18% cream and a blend of warm and fragrant spices (cinnamon, white pepper, paprika, coriander, smoked salt, just to name a few).  I'm going to freeze a bit of it.  Whenever I eat it in the next few months, I'll be brought back instantly to this time of year: early fall in a warm soup bowl.

I love how the power of association works, and especially with tasting.  I've been keeping some bottles in my parent's basement cellar for a few years now, and as I open these things, I know that the association will certainly be there.  I also know that as the wine will have evolved in the bottle, so will I have evolved out here in the world.

Cheers.

Melissa

Hoppin' on the Foodie Boat

Greetings everybody,

I realize that this is the trillion-and-eighth blog of its kind.  Everyone and their brother has a blog about food.  Why shouldn't we?  Food is sustenance, it's pleasure, it provides a reason/excuse/compulsion to meet and eat with others.  There's been a veritable explosion of enthusiasts here on the internet, and I'm happy to join in the fray.

I make lots of stuff at home.  I ferment my own wine and mead, I've started canning, I bake and cook many things from scratch too.  Okay, so I'm not that special.  The people around me tend to enjoy what I cook and ferment, and much of it I give or bring along to events as gifts.  The response:

"Wow, did you really make this?"

"Holy shit, this is really good!"

"I've never tasted anything like this."

"Did you really just spend eight hours roasting tomatoes to make snacks for an apartment full of nerds playing D & D?  You just did that."  *cue incredulous head-shaking: a quote from my friend Mike.

The thing is, I haven't really had that much experience cooking.  Before I moved out of my parent's house and into the wild world of wine (and college), I could barely cook KD.  I could use a microwave.  I could boil pasta (sometimes even this ended badly).

I lived with a graduate of a culinary program, and I went to school with a lot of people that had crossed streams of Hotel & Restaurant Management or chef's training; people that wanted to learn more about wine.  They shared with me the joys of food and wine, admonished me for using iodized salt and margarine, taught me how to cook meat and veggies properly, and usually got me well and truly hammered in the process.  (This is going to be a fairly hedonistic blog, I can already tell.)

I had come into wine from high school chemistry and biology classes.  It's an understatement to say that my palate was undeveloped.  I think I like it better this way: everything was fresh, new, intense, and a full sensory experience.  Taste, texture, visual appeal: all suddenly became my entire world.  I entered with no biases, no previous experience, and just drank it all in.

I'd like to bring more people into this world, and share my finds in food and wine, and I think I can do that by writing here.  I'm going to try and reach a lot of people, and I hope that gustatory experiences are in turn shared with me too.  I might devote a page and a half to fine whiskey, I might yell about peppers for a paragraph.  I'm not sure yet.  We'll see where this goes.

The dinner table is a fantastic forum.  Let this be a virtual dinner table: everyone brings something to it, and we all leave it with the pleasure of food and wine.

So, let the fun begin.

Cheers,

Melissa