Hi there.

I haven’t been around much lately.  Works been crazy, but I have done some cooking.  And I’ve snapped pictures along the way.  I promise I’ll post some of my amazing food soon.

 Sorry I’ve been a bad poster!

A Polar Bear Birthday Cake

Literally.  Today the Assiniboine Park Zoo’s Debbie the Polar Bear celebrated her 40th birthday.  Apparently, she’s the oldest known polar bear. 

For those of you unaware of Winnipeg’s connection to bears, I’ll give you a couple of the facts. 

• Winnie the Pooh, was in fact, named after Winnipeg – home to the Assiniboine Park Zoo (and to a cute little statue)
• Winnipeg is the capitol of Manitoba, the province in which Churchill is located.  Churchill is the ‘polar capitol of the world’.

Hmm.. that’s about it.

The thing that caught my attention when I heard about Debbie’s birthday was the cake they had prepared for her.  It was going to be a mixture of shrimp, snow, and smoked Goldeye, among other things.  I thought the smoked fish was a little much – I mean, Debbie would probably be fine with raw fish.  I guess it’s a special day, so let her eat smoked fish! 

Happy birthday Debbie – and to many more.

PS: The weather  cooperated for Debbie as well.  It was a balmy -22 C today. Brrr.

Let’s play catch up… Reading and Baking

I haven’t posted since last weekend’s cholent episode.  I haven’t done much cooking – I’ve just been eating lots and lots of salads. 

I have tried a couple of recipes out of Dorie Greenspan’s new cookbook – well, baking book – Baking: from my home to yours. First let me say that I love her writing style.  The book is written in a casual way, but the recipes still mean business.  She gives options, shares stories and offers a wide array of delicious baking recipes to the reader.  I’ve tried a muffin recipe and simple chocolate chip cookies.  You can tell a lot by a person’s chocolate chip cookies.  From this recipe I can tell that I’m going to like many, many more of Dorie’s recipes.  Get this book and bake!

I have been remiss in reporting on Michael Ruhlman’s book, The Reach of a Chef.  I finished reading it weeks ago – and had every intention on posting my thoughts but never did.  Having the memory of a gnat, all the pithy comments I wanted to share with you are lost forever.  I can tell you that I loved it. This time Ruhlman takes us into the world of the ‘celebrity chef’ – on many levels.  For anybody interested in the characters involved  with FoodTV or at the head of some of the US’s top restaurants will enjoy this book.  Get this book and read!

And last but not least, I’ve just finished Ruth Riechl’s Tender at the Bone. If you don’t know, Reichl is the editor-in-chief of Gourmet Magazine. She has also spent years as a restaurant critic for the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times.  This book is the first in a trilogy of memoirs.  In it we learn that as a child her mother’s cooking was so … scary, that she often worried that dinner guests would be poisoned.  She had to find her own way to food and cooking, and find it she did!  Though things seem to skip about a little too quickly for me,  I enjoyed the insight she shares with us – enough to want to read the next installment to see what happened next.

Buy books.  They’re good.

Lamb Cholent

Another Shabbat, another cholent.  This time with lamb. 

This was my favorite batch to date.  Up until late Friday afternoon I thought I’d do fruity-sweet tagine-style lamb cholent.  Then for some reason I changed my mind and went with this one instead:

• 1 cup small white beans, soaked overnight
• 4 Tbsp. olive oil, divided
• 1 large yellow onion, peeled and chopped
• 6 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
• 3/4 cup. pearl barley, rinsed
• 3 lbs. lamb stewing meat, with bones
• 3/4 lbs. new potatoes, scrubbed
• 2 med carrots, peeled and cut into chunks
• 2 sprigs of thyme
• 1 sprig of rosemary
• 1 1/2 tsp. kosher salt
• 1/2 tsp. black pepper
• 2 tsp. lemon zest
• 1/3 cup fresh lemon juice
• 8 cup chicken stock (or a mix of stock and water)

Basically, in a saute pan I sauteed the onions in olive oil for a few minutes, added the garlic and cooked until they just started to brown.    Then I added them to a large dutch oven.  Then the drained and rinsed beans and barley were added to the onions and garlic.

Back to the saute pan – a little more olive oil went in and the lamb pieces (seasoned with salt and pepper) were browned on all sides, and into the dutch oven.  Add everything else, cover and into a 200 degree oven.

In all my other cholent adventures I cooked them at 225.  The 25 minutes made a significant difference.  The meat was fork tender, but the vegetables still had some texture.  In fact, I dare say that the beans may have been a little undercooked after being in the oven for 19 hours.  Though I’d prefer to think of that as more a result of not soaking the beans long enough.

The problem is that this leads me to think the other cholents would benefit from the lower cooking temperature… so here I go again.

What are you searching for?

I haven’t done a ’search terms’ roundup in a while, so I thought we’d take another look at what y’all are looking for.

As usual, people wanna know as much as they can about Anthony Bourdain.  But I’m also happy to report that Michael Ruhlman has been getting a lot of action.   In fact, there were several searches for “Anthony Bourdain Michael Ruhlman”.   The food world’s Odd Couple perhaps?

I’m not sure what can be found on my blog that would bring a search for “pictures of shriveled up women” here.  But it did. Same goes for “so little time porn”.  Eh?

I’m not the only one interested in Gabrielle Hamilton and the possibility of a new book from here.  Several of you are searching for her.

We’re still not sure what we’re allowed to take on planes, and people are searching for answers to that question daily.

One person has searched for “kasha soup”.  I don’t have any recipes for it.  I’m not even partial to it.  But both my parents like to add a kasha knish to their chicken soup.  Try it.

Pineapple sage recipes continue to elude us.

One person has searched for “mojito mix + Target”.  I’d say don’t bother.  Not the best bucket of frozen beverage I’ve ever had.

I really hope that all of you who are searching for popcorn stuffing for turkey don’t try the recipe.  Really – find another stuffing recipe.

To finish up this roundup, I’m happy to say many of you are searching for cholent, happy cholent, hamim, chicken cholent, beef cholent and the best cholent recipes.  I hope that means people are actually out there trying their own pots of cholent.  Let us know how it goes.

No matter what brings you here, I hope you enjoy the time you spend browsing my blog.   Thanks for stopping by.

Holey Cow – Seriously, you can reach right in.

I was driving into the city on Sunday evening when a story on the CBC caught my attention.  Apparently, at the Brandon Livestock Expo (in Brandon, Manitoba) a dairy cow named Darth was on display.  A look through the local paper found an article on Saturday about Darth. (I assume you need to be a subscriber to read this.)

Now, there’s nothing unusual about a cow being on display at a livestock expo (I assume, having never been to one).  But Darth here is a special cow.  Unlike most cows that I’ve seen (I’ve seen many) Darth has a hole in his side.  Now, don’t be silly, the hole isn’t open – he’s not bleeding out.  In fact, there’s a dandy rubber plug that they use to close the hole. 

You see, Darth is used for research.  They’ve cut this hole out of his skin and rumen (the first of the cow’s four stomachs) and use the plug to keep it closed.  Now of course, this was all done for the sake of research.  It allows researchers to keep an eye (literally) on Darth’s digestion.  They can stick their hands into the cow’s stomach to pull out samples and test them.  It also allows them to add different nutrients.  I guess the goal is to find the best level of nutrients and determine the best diets for all other cows.

But did Darth really have to be on display?  Did they have to allow children to stick their arms into his stomach?  They were showing Darth off for educational purposes – but I wonder if it was really necessary.   Apparently Darth is perfectly comfortable with the hole in his side.  He shows no signs of discomfort.  But it makes me uncomfortable. 

These holes (cannulas) have been around for over a hundred years – but they’re something that I, and I think many people, have never heard of.  It just seems a little … ‘out there’.  This is one experiment that I don’t think kids need to be getting there arms into.

Soup Day!

I think it’s time to admit that winter is here.   What does winter mean to me??  Soup of course!

 I hadn’t planned ahead for this one – in fact, as I was leaving work the last thing I wanted to do was cook.  But as soon as I got home, to a chilly house, I decided that I’d throw something together.

I rummaged through the fridge, freezer and cupboards and found lots of goodies.  There was 1/2 a leek, 2/3 of an onion, 1 carrot, 1 celery rib, 1 russet potato and 1 red potato, 1/2 head of cauliflower and some frozen green and wax beans.  Kosher salt, black pepper.  I had some vegetable broth. There was about an ounce of cream, 3-4 ounces of half and half and a little milk in a carton.  I sauteed and simmered and tasted and it was just a little flat.  I decided in needed some thickening so I made a flour/milk slurry, whisked it in and simmered until it had thickened.  We’re almost there.  Just … needs.. something.  A couple of ounces of Swiss cheese was grated and added, plus some frozen parsley and basil.

 It was stupendous.  I love getting something great out of nothing much.  Good dinner with leftovers for tomorrow.