Does this taste like pee?

Posted on April 26, 2013 by Ann Allchin

A question I did not ask my husband tonight, but I could have. Not should have, in my mind, but could have. So I didn’t.

Last time I was at Rowe Farms, I picked up a nice big frozen kidney, aka, cow urine creation system. Just ’cause. When I grab something strange having questionable potential deliciousness, I procrastinate cooking it, which is why this post has been rather delayed since the last one. But today I bit the pee pee bullet (kidney stone?) and served it up.

I decided to learn to make steak and kidney pie, even though it’s really more of a fall/winter dish. If I’m eating fish, and I feel like red wine, I’m not going to drink something I don’t want just because someone says it doesn’t go together. Spring. Stew. Same.

I’d never had steak and kidney pie before, so I had to guess at what was traditional by sifting through recipes. The sense I got was that it was basically beef stew in pastry with some kidney thrown in. Guessing the whole thing got started because thrifty housewives needed to thicken up beef stew when they couldn’t afford all that much beef. I felt honoured to be joining the ranks, because I’m nothing if not a thrifty housewife. Might just start thickening Phil’s dinners up with other reasonably priced fillers. Bet I could make bologna look like salmon if I really made an effort.

Anyway, I found this stellar recipe that I chose partly because it called for ale, but not a full bottle of ale, so I felt like it was giving me permission to drink the other half. Sold.

Steak and Kidney Pie (modified from original per my tweaks. Makes 1 medium casserole dish)

30g plain flour
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
400g stewing beef – diced into 2cm pieces
a big knob of unsalted butter
Olive oil – for cooking
1 large onion – chopped
a good dollop of English mustard
170ml Ale
120ml beef stock – made from almost half of a Knorr stock cube (don’t use OXO it won’t taste the same.
a sprig of fresh thyme – leaves only
a good splash of Worcestershire sauce
Pint of mushrooms – quartered
Beef kidney, fatty membranes removed (mine was removed by butcher, but I read they can have them), cut away from central tendons
300g ready made puff pastry
1 egg yolk – lightly beaten to glaze

Directions: Defrost meats and puff pastry if necessary and preheat oven to 350. Bask in the beauty and slight creepiness of your kidney.

Melt butter on burner in stew pot that can go in the oven. Drizzle stew beef with olive oil and dredge in flour, having salt and peppered the flour. Over med-high heat, brown beef, adding more oil if necessary. Cut up soft bits of kidney, avoiding anything tough. Add to pan and brown briefly (kidney in pic below isn’t fully browned yet).

Remove. Splash some more oil in and add onions to pan, cooking until translucent. Add mushrooms and mustard and cook a few minutes. Pour beer in, and drink remainder of bottle. Here’s the nice Toronto one I used

Cook a minute or so, then add beef stock. Heat to boiling, and throw in remaining ingredients. Pop pot into oven, covered, and cook 2 hours. Your house will smell amazing.

Meanwhile, roll out your puff pastry so it will cover your casserole dish, flouring surface and rolling pin.

Remove stew from oven

Transfer to casserole dish. Brush top edge of dish with egg yolk and drape pastry over, poking centre a few times.

Brush pastry with egg yolk. Increase heat to 400 and cook a further 20 minutes or so, checking to make sure top doesn’t get too brown. And that’s it!

Results: The recipe was delicious, and I’d use it again for a straight steak pie, but the kidney didn’t do much for me. My mom hated liver so because I wasn’t raised eating organ meats I find it hard to get past the consistency. But there wasn’t an off-putting taste to it, and my husband ate his whole serving and put the leftovers away for another day – I would have heard about it if it was awful. Rating: 4 Yums for the recipe, but 1 Gag for the kidney. The cows can keep their pee makers.

Drink pairing: Already mentioned, Toronto’s Mill Street Tankhouse Ale

Ta dah! A Midwestern winner of the Great Shepherd’s Pie Contest

Posted on February 4, 2013 by Ann Allchin

Well, after thousands of entries (if you count spam blog comments asking me to buy fake Louis Vuitton bags as entries), a winner of the Great Shepherd’s Pie Contest has been determined. I couldn’t have been happier with the results if I had chosen the winner myself. Because I did.

Congratulations, Joanna at Midwestern Bite! $30 in culinary goodies will soon arrive at your Midwestern front door! (as long as you message me with your address – DM on Twitter?)

I loved what Joanna brought to the table. What’s better than ground beef? Ham. Better than potato? Sweet potato. And not just any sweet potato, spiked sweet potato. This is the second blog post in a row where I’ve had to break into our liquor globe

for some whiskey, and you don’t hear me complaining. I especially respect that Joanna’s recipe doesn’t call for the alcohol to be boiled off as most do. Giddy up.

PS You too can get yourself a liquor globe, if you have an antique collecting Uncle-Russell-in-law who decides to move to Mexico and relieve himself of all his earthly possessions around the time you’re getting wedding gifts. He also generously filled it for us, even though he doesn’t drink. Good guy. He’s just decided to move back here again, though. I might have to hide the liquor globe in case he has a change of heart.

Anyway, I recreated Joanna’s pie tonight just to make sure it was delicious, and I wasn’t disappointed. I omitted the sugar due primarily to a New Year’s resolution that’s about to go the way of the Betamax (and VHS, now that I think about it), but since I’m still livin the dream… It was just fine without it. I also sautéed the mushrooms and beans because I didn’t have any pre-roasted, and threw in some leftover onions. Otherwise, I made it as written. And I agree with Joanna’s assessment – this pie tastes like the holidays, all in one dish. Delish! (I saw a tweet today that said that word annoyed a chef I follow, so cheers to him)

I only took one picture to prove I actually tried Joanna’s recipe and I took it pre-topping, which turned out to be for the best because I kind of over-roasted the sweet potato so there were some blackish bits, which didn’t make for a pretty puree. She often takes her pics outside, so here is my little tribute in a sorry excuse for some Toronto snow.

But Joanna’s pictures kick the behind of mine (I typed “behind,” because I couldn’t figure out whether it was “but” or “butt”) around the block anyway, so check those out here.

Thanks for the blogging fun, Ms. Midwest!

Cheeky Monkey (but not monkey, thank God)

Posted on January 22, 2013 by Ann Allchin

It’s been so long since I’ve posted that initially I forgot what I was supposed to post about. I cooked something a while ago, and knew I had transferred the photos, but then I went on vacation (Mickey/Minnieville), came back, finally managed to stay awake past nine, opened my photos, and saw…

A hunk of meat. Even that didn’t do it for me. I thought to myself, “Well, I know it must have been some kind of unconventional animal part …”

What are we thinking. Belly? Neck? Maybe a different animal, conventional part. Horse? Beagle?

And then my brain kicked in. Cheeks. And not the ass kind, the face kind. Although I’m sure ass cheeks are quite tasty but named something slightly less descriptive.

I had decided to grab the cheeks (ha!) when I saw them not just because they were strange and therefore blogarific, but also because my husband had daringly ordered them at a restaurant recently and he found them fatty. I was convinced the chef hadn’t known how to prepare them properly and that I would be able to outdo him. Game on.

I flipped through recipes and learned that most people seemed to braise their cheeks, or “fry lightly and then stew it slowly with the lid on.” In red wine. I also learned from my Twitter friend @madball911 (yes, you can laugh at my using the word “friend” as related to Twitter, as my husband does) that I’d have to make sure to trim off a lot of fat to reduce the jellylike consistency in the result. So I trimmed and snipped fatty bits for ages,

browned all sides of the results in a pot with hot oil, and then followed this recipe from Epicurious:

Braised Beef Cheeks

 4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

 4 (12-oz) beef cheeks, trimmed of excess fat

 1 medium onion, finely chopped

 1 medium carrot, finely chopped

 1/2 celery rib, finely chopped

 1/2 teaspoon unsweetened cocoa powder

 2 cups red wine (preferably a dry Lambrusco or Chianti)

 1 (28- to 32-oz) can whole tomatoes including juice, chopped (3 cups)

 1 1/2 teaspoons salt

 1 teaspoon black pepper

Then I pulled the meat into chunks and scraped off anything that looked gelatinous. I was on ultra-hypersensitive slime alert, determined to win a chef challenge against a masterchef who didn’t know I existed … and who wasn’t anything close to a masterchef. But I was going to win, GOD AS MY WITNESS. I didn’t tell Phil he was eating cheeks again, because he would have complained if he knew he was trying them for a second time.

And it worked!

I watched him chew away, ready for him to squeal, “Is this CHEEKS? Ugh!” but he didn’t. He cleaned his plate My plate however…

Results: Cheeks may be trendy (the restaurant where we had them was on Ossington, in the coolio district) but chewing on a cheek just ain’t hip. The fatty jelly is inescapable. I snipped before, I scraped after, and still, I couldn’t finish my piece of meat. I’m starting to get really pessimistic about non-traditional cuts of meat. Maybe it’s time to move on to organs. Rating: 3 Gags. I won the battle against the chef, but the cheeks beat me by more than a pinch. Gross.

The strangely scrumptious shepherd’s pie contest

Posted on January 1, 2013 by Ann Allchin

And now, after having spell-checked “shepherd,” for fifteen minutes … Argh. I’m generally a ridiculously anal speller, but “Sheppard Avenue,” here in Toronto and various spellings of people’s last names threw me off this time …

Thanks cookingnook.com

Anyway. I’m throwing the coolest contest ever, in my opinion, and it’s my very first one, so if you’re reading this you need to participate.

Thanks deliaonline.com

I thought of it tonight as I was playing, “What’s in my fridge that I can turn into something.” If you’re the home chef for your family I know you’ve played this too. Too lazy to shop, too cheap to spend money, you hunt around for edible food items not too far past their due dates that could potentially nourish your family. I know you know the drill.

Thanks robertsplace.ca

And what I found in my fridge and freezer was this. Hotdogs. Hundreds of condiments. A half-eaten round of brie. A bag of carrots (they last forever). Frozen peas. A small frozen portion of ground beef. And in my pantry, a half-empty bag of potatoes that mostly hadn’t grown eyes. Half an onion. At first I wondered if I might have to convince my husband that Dr. Oz just revealed that eating pizza more than once a week is actually healthy, but then an evil smile spread across my face. Of course I had to file away the hotdogs and brie as raw materials for lunch the following day and use the rest to make shepherd’s pie.

Thanks cookingforengineers.com

Now if you’re from the UK, you’re probably thinking, “What’s that daft cow on about? I’d make cottage pie with those bits and bobs of nosh.” Same thing. If you’re French, you might be thinking, “Je ne know what elle is parlaying about. Je would make pate chinois.” Same thing, but you’re the daft vaches if you ask me, because there’s nothing Chinese about this recipe, as far as I can see.

Merci www.recettes.qc.ca

But no matter what you call it, I threw the ingredients together; a cup of beef stock, meat and veg pre-cooked in a pan, potatoes boiled and mashed, then baked in a casserole with meat/veg on bottom, potatoes on top, and bob was my oncle. It was fine, but boring, so my mind started wandering. What if I had access to more ingredients and had gotten creative? I could have thrown olives in. Or scallops. Liver. I’m half-kidding with these suggestions, but I was inspired by what could have been done with the general “shepherd’s pie,” concept.

Merci patechinois.net

So here’s the contest. Create a “dangerous,” version of Shepherd’s Pie. This can mean whatever you want it to mean. Submit it by 11:59pm Feb 1 2013 by either:

Posting to your food blog and telling us to visit in the comments below, or
E-mailing your recipe to ann.allchin@gmail.com, hopefully with photos

My family and I will review the entries and prepare the two we think are most interesting with the greatest potential for deliciousness (don’t bother making it kid-friendly, they’re just out of luck on this one). I’ll post a summary of the submissions and announce the winner in my blog Feb3.

And the prize will be $30 in culinary specialty items (dangerous sauces and dips) mailed to your home!

Good luck!! (And please subscribe so we can be Blog Friends Forever!)

Got me some tail

Posted on December 29, 2012 by Ann Allchin

I just got the best book for Christmas. I asked my brother-in-law and sister-in-law for a small paperback about cooking the odd bits of an animal, and what they got me was a gorgeous hard cover called “Odd Bits – how to cook the rest of the animal,” by Jennifer McLagan.

I had taken it out of the library before and tried to memorize parts of it, but luckily John and Janet rescued from my own frugality so that now I can actually cook from it.

Considering my blog interests, I should have taken the plunge and nabbed this book a long time ago. But even if I didn’t cook dangerously and only ate chicken fingers (which sounds like adventurous animal parts, but…) I would still love reading this book. It blends food history, with culture, with storytelling, with beautiful photography. Love it.

Anyway, the ironic thing is that two nights before I received the book, I cooked the most dangerous cow part I’ve cooked to date without its help, which isn’t really saying much since the author describes how to prepare brains and udders and testicles and eyelashes. Okay, maybe not eyelashes. But after reading through what I could have been doing, I felt comparatively lame looking back on what I had done. I cooked oxtail.

Thanks http://goates-legacy.blogspot.ca/

When my blog fingers start to get itchy, I’m always surprised at how easily it is to stumble across a food that’s blog worthy. I always think to myself, “Well, better get myself down to T&T,” Toronto’s grocery store chain catering to global food interests, which would take at least two hours to do round-trip, and then I walk down my street to a local shop and find something that saves me the trouble. I think I’ve only been to T&T once, but I probably think about it at least every week. Toronto is awesome.

Anyway, I waltzed down to Rowe Farms with my stroller and found some nice locally raised oxtail. Sure, I thought, “ew,” to myself, but I also knew that many cultures enjoy oxtail and so I shouldn’t be a chicken about it. I tried not to look at doggy tails on the way home and Googled, “very best ox tail recipe,” which is often my strategy for finding good recipes. Here’s the first blog recipe I came across:

Slow Cooker Caribbean Oxtails

1 bunch scallions, chopped
6 large cloves garlic, chopped
3 inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
1 teaspoon ground allspice
1 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon crushed habanero pepper
4 pounds oxtails
1 large onion, thinly sliced
6 sprigs fresh thyme
2 cups chicken broth or water

Directions: In a small bowl, mix the scallions, garlic, ginger, allspice, salt and habanero pepper together. Rub the spice mix all over the oxtails, marinate for at least one hour to overnight.

Place the sliced onion on the bottom of the slow cooker. Place the thyme sprigs on top, then the oxtails. Pour the broth over the oxtails, cover and cook on high for 6 hours. When the oxtails are cooked, remove them from the slow cooker. Remove the thyme stems from the liquid. With a blender or food processor, carefully puree the sauce, then return it to the slow cooker, or pour it into a serving dish. Return the oxtails to the sauce.

Results: My house smelled delicious! If you don’t cook but want to pretend like you do, make this to distribute the aroma through your house, order in, and secretly pitch the oxtail. Everyone will think you’re a star. If you decide to serve the oxtail though, people might guess that you’re not a culinary god/goddess. Full disclosure – we weren’t in fine form for food sampling because we all had a touch of the flu on Christmas Eve this year, but I decided to cook it anyway before it went bad. I tried a bite or two trying to be an impartial-yet-slightly-nauseous food scientist. The seasoning was amazing, but the consistency of the oxtail wasn’t stellar. It was a little like second-rate chicken wings – fatty and chewy without much meat. I tried it again a few days later and my new frame of festive, healthy mind improved the result, but I still wouldn’t crave them. Rating: 1 Yum

But the good news… The good news is that I separated the meat and bones from the liquid (which was runnier than the “sauce,” impression the recipe gives) and used it as a rich stock for my famous roasted cream of mushroom soup, which might actually be Epicurious’ famous roasted cream of mushroom soup. This rich, hearty base melded perfectly with the mushrooms, and I could use less cream due to the improved consistency over chicken stock. Winner. Here’s the bonus recipe: Apologies that I forgot to take pictures.

Oxtail Roasted Cream of Mushroom Soup

1 pound portobello mushrooms, stemmed, dark gills removed, caps cut into 3/4-inch pieces
1/2 pound shiitake mushrooms, stemmed, caps cut into 3/4-inch pieces
6 tablespoons olive oil
3 14-ounce cans (or more) vegetable broth (or use homemade broth with oxtail or other beef bones)
Read More http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Creamy-Roasted-Mushroom-Soup-107252#ixzz2GPbXUjp2

Wine Pairing: My favourite wine website suggests that Sauvignon Blanc pairs perfectly with mushroom soup, so I’ll go with the top-rated Robert Mondavi Fumé Blanc 2009, Napa Valley, selling for $22.95 in Ontario.

Swimming with the fishes

Posted on December 13, 2012 by Ann Allchin

Ever walk past a tank of swimming fish in a grocery store’s seafood department and think to yourself, “Who the heck actually buys one of those?” Well, this week, for the benefit of my gazillions of weird food fans, the answer was, “I do!”

There’s something about asking for live food that seems both indulgent and disgusting. As I pointed at the ugly grey fish making sweet little kissy faces and ordered the poor grocery guy to chase him with the big net, I felt a pang of guilt that I would be responsible for taking him/her from a swimming state to a dinner plate, but I had to tell those sucky inner voices of mine to shut up. I am a meat-eater after all, at almost every single meal, and it’s hypocritical if I get turned off just because I have to watch the inevitable dirty work go down in person. I just saw someone’s Twitter description say, “If slaughterhouses had clear walls everyone would be vegetarian,” and although I’m sure this wasn’t intended to encourage me to watch my food getting killed, it did make me try to own the fact that I eat meat. If I continue to do it. Maybe the conclusion to this blog will be that I eventually become veggie. But not just yet.

Because I am a food journalist, I’ll describe one more disturbing experience that I had in eating a live fish. If you’re vegetarian, please turn away and wait for my next post. Grocery guy took out my flopping fish…

…and put it on the back counter beside a big rubber mallet. I was horrified, worried that I was about to see the fish get a violent whack on the head, but then I didn’t see it. Grocery guy lopped off all the fins and gutted and scaled the fish with robot-like efficiency, handing it to me after only about fifteen seconds in a plastic bag with the head on and the rest of the body intact. So I’m still left wondering – did I just miss the death blow, or did it not happen? Closer and closer to veganism every day. But why does meat have to taste so good?

And my day just got better and better. Now I had to prepare a whole fish for dinner that day (to take advantage of the “fresh meat”) and I was having friends over in the afternoon followed by piano lessons for my daughter which meant I wouldn’t be able to prep everything until after seven. Let me tell you, I wouldn’t recommend lopping off a fish’s head…

…while entertaining three moms and their kids, and I didn’t – I hacked it off with a dull knife feeling like an axe murderer before they arrived, wrapping the rest in foil, stuffing it with garlic, and baking it incognito while we all sipped coffee (aka wine).

I chose a recipe from Jamie Oliver’s Meals in Minutes because I was so pressed for time. Despite my adoration of Jamie Oliver, this cookbook kind of bugs me because the instructions are jumbled together to help home chefs with efficiency, popping out an entire meal at the end – I find this makes recipes difficult to modify and track at a glance. In this case, though, I needed Jamie’s help to throw a dinner together as quickly as possible, and I loved how it worked out. I’ll copy the entire recipe below so that you can see how the book works, and then I’ll describe how I modified it to prep as much as possible ahead, throwing the rest together post-piano. He includes a dessert and drink too, but I didn’t make those so I’ve omitted them.

Branzino (Recently Live Tilapia, for me) & Crispy Pancetta, Mashed Sweet Potatoes and Asian Greens

Mashed Sweet Potatoes

1 ½ pounds sweet potatoes
2 limes
A small bunch of cilantro
2Tbsp mango chutney
Soy sauce

Greens

1 fresh red chile
1 clove garlic
Soy sauce
1 lime
Sesame oil
1 bunch asparagus
1 head of broccoli

Branzino

8 slices pancetta
4 x 6-ounce branzino fillets, skin on, scaled and pin-boned (for me this was one tilapia fish plus a few supplemental fillets of whitefish)
1Tsp fennel seeds
1 lemon

Seasonings

Olive oil
Extra virgin olive oil
Sea salt & black pepper

To Start Get all your ingredients and equipment ready. Fill and boil the kettle. Put a large saucepan with a lid and a large frying pan on a medium heat.

Potatoes Wash the sweet potatoes, trim off any gnarly bits, then stab them a few times with a knife. Put in a large microwave-safe bowl, halve oneo f the limes and add to the bowl, then cover with a double layer of plastic wrap and microwave on full power for 12 minutes, or until cooked through.

Greens Seed and finely chop the chile, adding half to a large serving bowl and add 2 tablespoons of soy sauce and ¼ to 1/3 cup of extra virgin olive oil. Squeeze in the juice of 1 lime and add a splash of sesame oil. Mix, taste, and adjust the soy sauce if needed. Trim the asparagus stalks. Quarter the head of the broccoli lengthways from the head to the base of the stalk.

Branzino Put the pancetta into the frying pan with a drizzle of olive oil. Keep an eye on it, turning when crispy. [When the pancetta has become golden] remove it to a plate, leaving the fat in the pan. Add the fish to the pan, skin side down. Shake the pan and use a spatula to press the fillets flat for a few seconds. Pound 1 teaspoon of fennel seeds in a pestle & mortar and scatter over the fish from a height with a pinch of salt & pepper. Finely grate over the zest of 1 lemon, then cut the lemon into quarters and set aside.

Potatoes Finely chop the cilantro on a large wooden cutting board, setting a few leaves aside for the garnish. Add the mango chutney, a good splash of soy sauce, a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, the juice from ½ lime, and the reserved chopped chile. Chop and mix everything together on the board.

Greens Fill the large saucepan with boiling water and add a large pinch of salt. Add the broccoli and asparagus, making sure they are completely submerged. Put the lid on and turn the heat to high.

Branzino Check the fish – once the skin is golden and crispy, turn the heat down to low – but have confidence to let the skin become good and crispy before reducing the heat.

Potatoes Get the sweet potatoes out of the microwave and check they are cooked through, then use tongs to squeeze over the juice from the hot lime halves and discard them. Carefully tip the sweet potatoes on top of the mango chutney mixture and use a knife or masher to chop and mash everything together, including the skins. Season to taste, adding more fresh lime juice if needed.

Branzino Take the pan of fish off the heat and flip the fillets over so they gently finish cooking on the flesh side. Return the pancetta to the pan to warm through, then serve the fish and pancetta on top of the board of mashed potatoes. Pop the lemon sedges on the side for squeezing and sprinkle over the reserved cilantro. Take to the table.

Greens Drain the broccoli and asparagus in a colander, then tip into the serving bowl with the dressing, quickly toss, and take to the table.

Results: These were the best sweet potatoes I’ve had in my life! They were spicy, though, so if you don’t like spice maybe substitute a sweet red pepper – I can never find red and green chiles, so I substituted a scotch bonnet pepper, and my hands were still burning through the night. Also, I don’t like cooking in the microwave, especially with plastic wrap, so if you have enough time, be sure to boil or steam your potatoes instead. But I’m definitely going to make a version of these sweet potatoes for Christmas dinner. Delish.

But this post was about the fish. So what I did differently from Jamie… I wrapped my whole fish (bloody and slimy, drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with salt, stuffed with sliced garlic) in foil and baked it on a baking sheet at 400 for 35 minutes. Doing this made it easy to pick apart for meat, which I added to the pancetta fat in the pan…

…sprinkling with crushed fennel seeds and lemon zest as Jamie suggests. And this got me about 4 bites of meat! I think if you buy tilapia fillets they probably come from monsters, not grocery store fish like mine. I learned from this experience that swimming fish are mostly there for decoration. Sorry fishy. Anyway, I fried my pre-baked meat to crisp it up a little and followed the rest of the recipe, frying the pancetta and washing and cutting veg before my friends came, re-warming the pancetta and cooking everything else post-piano.

Phil loved it. Jamie Oliver never disappoints. But I can’t even tell you if there was a difference in taste due to fishy freshness because I had to mix it with more meat. I won’t ask for a live fish again, but it was definitely “an experience” to cook one. Rating: 5 Yums for Jamie’s recipe and cookbook, 2 Gags for cooking a live grocery store fish.

Wine Pairing

In honour of the NHL strike, I’ll choose one of winealign.com’s top chardonnay suggestions (which the site says pairs well with pan fried whitefish), Wayne Gretzky’s 2008 unoaked chardonnay, selling for $13.95 in Ontario.

Slow cooker double feature – Lamb shoulder and quince, and Pork hock and cabbage

Posted on December 6, 2012 by Ann Allchin

I’ve been loving my crockpot lately – it’s getting cold, and I’m getting lazy. I just love that you can peel and chop a thing or two, douse it with liquid, throw in a hunk of meat, flick a switch, and come home hours later to a house that smells like your personal chef has been toiling all day long. Jackie is swearing as she reads this because she’s waiting patiently until Christmas to get one, but don’t worry friend, I’m sure Santa will be good to you. And if somehow you made the naughty list (I’m thinking you’re tracking at about 50/50?), go treat yourself to one on Boxing Day.

So I have a slight problem with describing my first recipe to you, and that is that I kind-of forget what I did. I picked up quince as my dangerous experimental food early last week and created this recipe soon after, but I flipped through so many recipes and finally improvised so that I’m not sure where things ended up. Lessons learned – don’t blog late, and don’t cook and drink wine if blogging. I’ll describe my memory’s best recollection below, but the good news is that I’m convinced if you follow the steps I jokingly described in my first paragraph, almost anything will taste good cooked in a slow cooker. Observe:

Lamb Shoulder and Quince

Lamb shoulder that will fit in your slow cooker
3 quince, cored and quartered (no need to peel) (substitute potatoes if you like)
1 onion, peeled and coarsely chopped
3 carrots, peeled and chopped
3 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
1Tbsp fresh thyme, leaves picked
500mL beef stock
1C day-or-two-old red wine (great use for leftovers)
1 177mL (6oz) can tomato paste
Salt and pepper to taste

1. Peel and chop a thing or two: Quince, onion, carrots, garlic

2. Douse with liquid: Add stock, wine and tomato paste. Sprinkle with thyme

3. Throw in a hunk of meat: Rinse lamb, season with salt and pepper, throw it in 4. Flick a switch: If you have 5 hours, turn it on high. If you have 8 hours, turn it on low

5. Delicious house: Remove meat, separate from fat, serve over gently mashed veg Results: Shockingly, I think the recipe I’ve described above is exactly what I did. I think sometimes I cook subconsciously. The quince tasted a little like unsweet pear – an interesting alternative to root vegetables, yet slightly grainy like a pear, so decide whether or not you can accept that. This was a hearty, comforting, simple meal to prepare. If you don’t have quince, pear might work, but if you would prefer to be conventional you can always revert to potatoes.

Rating: 3 Yums. I would rate this recipe higher, but the quince wasn’t fabulous

Pork Hock and Cabbage

I daringly picked up a pork hock (kind of like the shin/calf section, where the piggy foot meets the piggy leg) from the mystery meat section of our discount grocery store. I used to love when my mom would boil a “picnic pork shoulder,” with cabbage in a pot all day, so to answer this craving, I came up with the following way to slow cook my experimental hock:

2 pork hocks (I only bought one, but we were nearly short of meat to serve two adults and two wee kids)
1 onion, peeled and chopped
½ savoy cabbage, chopped into large hunks
700mL chicken stock

1. Peel and chop a thing or two: Cabbage, onion

2. Douse with liquid: Chicken stock

3. Throw in a hunk of meat: Rinse hocks and add. Chop to make fit if necessary

4. Flick a switch: If you have 5 hours, turn it on high. If you have 8 hours, turn it on low

5. Delicious house: Remove meat, separate from fat, serve over veg

Results: Like many “odd” animal parts I’ve cooked for this site, although these cuts are cheaper, they take more work to find the meat. The hock was more fatty than other cuts, but if you’re a dark meat person, this may be for you. And slow cooked cabbage is the only way to go, although I might have to make up a new tag called “gassy,” based on my recent posts. Rating: 2 Yums

Wine Pairing: Winealign.com suggests that a classic red pairing for pork sausage is from Rhone South, so I’ve chosen to suggest this top-rated one (and no, my recipes above aren’t sausage, but I figure their salt and fat probably make them friendly with similar wines): Pierre Amadieu Romane Machotte Gigondas 2010 at $23.95 in Ontario.

I can’t seem to get rid of these four number bullets at the bottom of the page, so as a special bonus, here is what I’d like for Christmas:

A foot massage
New weird foods
A method to type beside #2, above

Kid-friendly treasures

Posted on December 1, 2012 by Ann Allchin

Ooh I’m a bad, bad penpal. This month was my second time participating in “Foodie Pen Pals” – a foodie gift exchange open to anyone who wishes to participate. Everyone with a blog posts about their experience on the same day of the month, which happens to be…1.5 hours ago. I fell asleep. Wine and pasta are not a good combo when you need to get something done after the kids are in bed. At least my conscience woke me up again.

This month I was paired with a foodie keener, and I say this as a compliment. Jessica Bergen sent me a detailed questionnaire about my likes and dislikes, so I was very interested to see what would come back.

And what did? A little bit of everything, each item with its own recipe, all within a kid-friendly theme. I prepared the first one tonight, and while it was tasty, I think it might have had sleeping potion in it. I’ll describe that one last, so hang on until the end to see how it went. Here’s the rest of what Jessica sent:

Summary:

Pumpkin pie cupcakes
Jello Fishbowls
Chicken rice casserole
Baby apricot muffins
Pasta primavera

1. Pumpkin Pie Cupcakes

2/3C flour
1/4tsp baking powder
1/4tsp baking soda
1/4tsp salt
1 can (15oz) pumpkin puree
1Tbsp pumpkin pie spice (provided by Jessica!)
1/2C white sugar
1/4C brown sugar
2 large eggs
1tsp vanilla extract
3/4C skim milk
Whipped topping and pumpkin pie spice for topping

Directions: Preheat to 350. Line cupcake wrappers in a muffin pan. In a medium bowl, mix together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and pumpkin pie spice. In a larger bowl, combine pumpkin, sugar, brown sugar, eggs, vanilla and milk until smooth. Add dry to wet. Mix until just combined (batter will be runny). Fill liners ¾ full and bake for 15-20 minutes or until brown. Once cooled, add a dollop of whipped topping into the concave centre and sprinkle with pumpkin pie spice.

2. Jello Fishbowls

1/2C blueberries
Blue jello (provided by Jessica)
1 handful swedish fish candies
Small clear bowls or plastic cups

Directions: Put blueberries in bottoms of bowls or cups. Prepare jello mix and pour over. When jello has partially set, push a fish or two in and allow it to set further. Jessica suggested cutting fish out of apple, but this was beyond my artistic capabilities, so I made a slight substitution!

3. Chicken Rice Casserole

1C wild & brown rice (part of my package)
1 package onion soup mix
2 chicken breast halves
1 can cream of chicken or mushroom soup
2 cans water

Directions: Preheat to 350. Grease 9×13 pan. Add rice and sprinkle with onion soup mix. Place chicken on rice. Mix creamy soup and water and pour over. Cover with foil. Bake for 2 hours.

4. Baby apricot muffins (a dangerous food for sure, since I’ve never actually cooked with baby food!)

1 3/4C flour
1/2C sugar
2tsp baking powder
1/2tsp baking soda
1/2tsp salt
1/3C dried apricots, finely chopped
1 egg
1/4C cooking oil
213mL apricot baby food

Directions: Preheat to 400. Measure first six ingredients into a large bowl. Stir, and make a large well in the centre. Beat egg in small bowl until frothy and mix in oil and apricots. Pour into well and stir just to moisten. Batter will be lumpy. Fill greased muffin pans ¾ full. Bake for 15 minutes. Remove from pan after 5 minutes.

5. Pasta Primavera

1 package whole wheat pasta (I chose fusilli), prepared per package instructions
1 head broccoli, deflowered (ha ha)
1 red pepper, coarsely chopped
1C shrimp
1C scallops
3 handfuls frozen peas
2C chicken stock
3/4C cream
Glug of olive oil
1 Clubhouse pasta primavera seasoning pack (Includes dill weed, dehydrated minced onion, dehydrated minced garlic, coarse grind black pepper, thyme leaves)

Directions: Prepare pasta. Meanwhile, in a stir fry pan, heat glug of olive oil. Add broccoli and cook until bright, about 2 minutes. Add seafood and cook until no longer opaque, about 2 minutes. Add peas, red pepper, chicken stock, cream, and spices. Bring to boil and simmer until reduced, about 5 minutes. Combine sauce with drained pasta. Voila!

Results: Easy, quick and delicious! A great shortcut meal for days that prep seems tiring. Thanks for everything, Jessica!

Tune in again in a few days to see me return to my regular theme where I cook weird ingredients. Up next – Quince. Also, click on over to the Foodie Pen Pals site where Lindsay is suggesting donation to help the victims of Hurricane Sandy rather than trading food packages with one another. Check this great holiday idea!

Paneer and a Pen Pal

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Ann Allchin

So this post is a fun little diversion from my usual experimentation with weird ingredients – except that I still experimented with weird ingredients. I’m addicted, really.

Anyway, I’ll explain. This month I finally signed up for “Foodie Pen Pals.” Lindsay at theleangreenbean.com runs a pen pal program where foodies are paired together to trade food items by mail, and then they blog about what they received at the end of the month. So this is that blog!

I was excited to receive my package from Ashlee at Twitter handle @missashlee286. I opened the box to find…

Very considerate that Ashlee had planned a whole family meal for me within our $15 limit! Maybe I should hire her as our personal chef, because that’s the kind of budget that I should really obey on a more regular basis.

So I was excited to get started, and liked the idea of a chicken curry, but if you know me well you know that chicken isn’t quite weird enough for my strange tastebuds (unless it’s mixed with something strange, of course), so my mind started to veer and swerve until I was at Costco and found this:

A gigantic package of Paneer, or Indian cottage cheese. The picture really doesn’t do justice to how big it was. You may be wondering how many people I was looking to feed with a huge double pack of something I had never cooked before, and the answer to that question is two, because there was no way my kids were going to try it. You may also be wondering, “Why wouldn’t she just go to a regular grocery store and get a teensy pack once she knew that was what she wanted to do,” but again, if you knew me well you would know that I do everything in my power to reduce the number of times I have to wrestle my children in and out of car seats. If I can buy everything at one store I do, even if it means I’ll be filling my fridge with a supply of cheese that would feed the entire cast of Slumdog Millionaire for a year.

I’ve eaten Paneer from restaurants with peas (mattar paneer), and also with spinach (palak paneer), and I love both, but my family is more partial to peas so I bought a bag of those big enough to feed the island nation of Australia and rushed home to get cooking. I Googled recipes for a while to figure out what else needed to go in this dish, finding only that ghee (clarified butter which you may remember from Helen Bannerman’s kids’ story is actually made of tigers) and onions were the main elements that were consistent, other than the spice and sauce elements which I was already lucky enough to have received. So here’s what I did:

Ooh, but wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. I forgot that Ashlee had planned for me to have a kid-friendly appetizer, so I boiled up some grapes in 1/3 bottle of leftover wine and 1/2C sugar, added them to the crackers and Wow butter (awesome substitute for peanut butter which she knew I liked due to earlier blog post – peanut allergic daughter) and made little fake-PB&J snackers. And before you call the Children’s Aid, Mom (again?), I boiled the wine and sugar together for a good long time so there was no alcohol left when the grapes were coated.

But back to the Easy Mattar Paneer. SO quick and easy:

2 cups paneer cheese, cut into small cubes
2Tbsp butter – I didn’t have ghee, using regular butter rather than the tiger variety
1 medium onion, chopped
1 package Kitchens of India Curry Paste, or your favourite curry mix or recipe
2 servings of rice, per package directions

Directions: Melt butter in pan over med-high heat. Add cubes of paneer, cooking until browned.

Set aside. Add onion to pan and cook until translucent. Cook frozen peas in boiling water, drain, and add to pan with onion. Add curry sauce and paneer and cook just until hot. Serve over rice.

Results: My first foodie pen pal experience was a great success! Dinner, which I cooked a few nights ago, was enjoyed by all, and I cooked the identical meal again tonight using spinach instead of peas and it was just as good. I also unloaded a great portion of the leftover paneer on my friend to prepare, so it may be the recipe that keeps on giving. Thanks again Ashlee! Recipe Rating: 3 Yums

Bonus Fun Facts about Paneer: People have been eating it since before 6000BC, and now it’s served as the “McSpicy Paneer,” at McDonald’s India. It has probably reinvented itself even more often than Madonna has.

The Great (Green) Pumpkin (Squash)

Posted on October 20, 2012 by Ann Allchin

A few days ago I wrote about cute little grape kiwis, and said that everyone likes to eat something if it’s extra mini. Now, only two days later, I’m going to entice you with something big. I’ve been seeing super huge squash around, and I knew immediately that I needed to add them to my weird food addiction…I mean, food freak show…or whatever. My blog.

Thanks Brain4rent’s blog

Well, they weren’t that super huge. Damn, do you think when they grow those things the pumpkin patch sucks the whole county dry? The squash I’ve been seeing are big enough, though. But go big or go home, I always say, unless I’m talking grape kiwis or kumquats, in which case I change my tune faster than Mitt Romney.

Anyway, these are the green giants I wanted…

…but what was I going to do with so much squash, throw a squash party? Sounds weird, but you know you’d still come if I promised an open bar. I didn’t have to entice guests with booze this time, though, because I was happy to find that my local fruit market sold hunks of the great green pumpkins, which actually turned out to be “Zapallo Macre,” (I’m pretty sure, anyway) for the bargain basement price of only $1.99 per chunk. Even this amount was so big that my son agreed to struggle with it in exchange for the fame and fortune my blog brings, but doing so nearly took him down.

I say I’m pretty sure my squash was Zapallo Macre, a squash popular in Peru that looks like a green pumpkin, but my usual identification expert – Monsieur Google – came up short this time, other than providing a few Peruvian photos of the Zap Mac that looked similar to my squash. I think the big greeners must be local because they suddenly showed up alongside pumpkins at many fruit stands and not solely at specialty importer-type markets, but there weren’t any promising results for “green pumpkins Ontario,” or “green squash,” that proved this true. If anyone has further info, let me know.

No matter what they were, I was feeling chilled yesterday so I decided to make my pumpkin slash squash into soup. Here comes the ONLY recipe for giant green Ontario Zapallos currently available on the World Wide Web (hush the crowds, please), which I invented:

Giant Green Pumpkin Soup with Savoury Sweet Sprinkles (serves 8)

Giant green pumpkin/squash (probably Zapallo Macre), peeled and cut into 1.5” chunks. Approximately 14 cups, or filling 2 cookie sheets. Substitute butternut squash or pumpkin if you can’t find the big greens
Knives exhausted from prepping squash
1 very large onion, peeled and chopped
3 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
1/4C sherry
1.5” fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
2Tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
900mL veggie stock
Sprinkles: walnuts, green pumpkin seeds, and Craisins
Olive oil
Kosher salt and pepper to taste

Directions: Preheat oven to 400. Toss squash with olive oil and kosher salt, and spread across two cookie sheets prepared with foil. Roast squash 45 minutes, stirring once. Meanwhile, sautee onions and garlic in a large pot until translucent, about three minutes. Add sherry and continue to cook until it nearly disappears.

Add squash, ginger, parsley, and stock, bringing to a boil. Add to food processor in batches, pureeing the soup. Now. If you prefer a very smooth, comforting soup, you’re finished. If not, pour into bowls and sprinkle with walnuts, pumpkin seeds, and Craisins. If you’re not vegan, you may wish to experiment with bacon, sour cream, or parmesan cheese.

Results: Very good! I didn’t taste anything special about the green squash – would love to taste it alongside a butternut to see if I could tell the difference, but I don’t think I would be able to. If you want a very healthy, vegan soup that will feed umpteen people for a very low price, this is your recipe. Love a dish that I know I could eat a whole pot of and it would still be improving my health rather than adding to my waistline. Rating: 4 Yums

Beverage pairing: Would you believe that this is actually what I drank with the soup by coincidence? It’s true. Apparently my shopping habits were pumpkin themed this week. Happy Halloween!

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