We've had a good week for food.
I came home from our holidays with a rekindled passion for my kitchen which I believe can be attributed to taking three weeks off from cooking, watching multiple episodes of Chopped and Pioneer Woman on Food Network, and reading an old issue of Bon Appetit that they let me take from the Ladybug Cafe in Midland. Not cooking after much cooking is a delight, and cooking after much not cooking is also a delight. I had a wonderful break, and now I am delighting in googling recipes, writing grocery lists, and making big messes in my little kitchen.
I think of myself as a chef-in-progress- cooking for my family is a learning experience. Recipes to me are really more like guidelines and a lot of my meals are experiments. I'll make something and then spend a good portion of the meal talking about how it could be improved, what wasn't quite right, what would make it better. Addison listens graciously, occasionally offers a helpful opinion, and is thankfully not a picky eater. After we're done our meal I diligently write all my notes in one of my many notebooks, and then, if I'm honest, never look at it again.
Here's what we ate last week (and some of my notes):
We started our week with roast chicken and vegetables (peppers, red onions, and nectarines) with boiled new potatoes. I am loving red onions and nectarines right now, and yes, I know nectarines are not a vegetable. My potatoes were a little undercooked and I think next time I will carve the chicken in the kitchen before I serve it - that way I will avoid the potential disappointment of finding out my chicken is undercooked after I've served it.
The next day, I used all the leftover meat from the roast chicken and fried it up with the leftover veggies and some taco seasoning. I have mixed feelings about taco seasoning. On the one hand, its very convenient and tastes good, but on the other hand, it doesn't feel very "cheffy" to me. I feel like if I was a contestant on Chopped and the judges saw me dumping the taco seasoning into my dish, they would be aghast and disgusted. Its also a slightly mysterious mixture. For example, which "spices" are used? What is "hydrolyzed wheat protein"? And why is "yeast extract" necessary? I'm not saying those are bad ingredients, I just don't know what they are. But again, if the taste buds say yes, why say no? (I do not apply this principal to life in general though :p)
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| inspirational spread from bon appetit |
I served my tacos with feta cheese and a fresh tomato and nectarine salsa. Just straight up tomatoes and nectarines (I didn't feel for raw onions and we didn't have any other salsa type ingredients). I use my handy dandy slap-chop and add a tiny bit of balsamic vinegar, honey, and salt and pepper I think it was quite good. My taste buds said yes.
The next day we had chickpea and cashew curry with rice inspired by me forgetting to take the meat out of the freezer, scrounging for ingredients in my kitchen, and googling "chickpea and cashew curry" to make sure it was a thing. This is a skill I learned as a university student. Google is a chef-in-progress's best friend.
I made my curry with lots of butter, onions, garlic, curry powder (same dilemma as the taco seasoning), home canned tomatoes (thanks mom!), a little brown sugar, and some cream. I only recently discovered that you can put cream in curry. It was a good discovery. Addison had an idea to put cubes of cheese on the curry (kind of like paneer only we used monterey jack). It worked quite well! I need to do some more learnin' about curry because I want it to be more jam-packed with flavour next time.
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| This is the curry as leftovers a few days later. It improved with time because here I ate it with pickled red onions, fresh salsa and cilantro, yoghurt, and cheese. |
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| inspirational photo from bon appetit |
On Thursday we put our hard earned passports to use and took a little drive south of the border to go to McDonald's, check out Trader Joe's, and pick up some books. In that order. Trader Joe's was a half hour extra drive but it was well worth it for two reasons: French Vanilla Ice Cream and Coffee Ice Cream. So delicious. That evening, I tested out a new chocolate chip cookie recipe I found on-line which claims to yield the Best Chocolate Chip Cookies. The recipe delivered. I made them with coarsely chopped dark chocolate AND chocolate chips and then sprinkled the final product with some sea salt. Adding salt to food is pretty ordinary but saying something is salted? Exotic. The ice cream was good, the cookies were good, and we put them together to make ice cream sandwiches with Salted Dark Chocolate Chunk Cookies (ah, the importance of branding) and French Vanilla/ Coffee Ice Cream. Yum!
While we're on the subject of cookies, let me take a moment to extol the virtues of the humble ice cream scooper and its capacity to scoop perfectly uniform balls of dough every time. If you never thought of assigning this task to an ice cream scooper before, you're welcome.
Also, I have learned that fresh eggs make better cookies than old eggs. But if you need to use up some old eggs, you might as well hide them in some cookies.
On Saturday, we had my parents over for dinner. I was still on a bit of a taco thing, and I really had it in my heart to make shredded beef tacos. I went to Rio Friendly Meats for some beef and had a nice chat with the lady working there who recommended that I purchase a brisket for its sinewy quality. This was an exciting prospect for me because the only time I've heard of brisket was on the food network and they had to cut it special for me at the back. It felt very cheffy. Yes, cheffy. Its a word now.
I brought home my 5 pounds of sinewy brisket in a beautiful brown paper package, hacked it up, rubbed some cumin and chili powder on it and stuck it in my slow cooker with a bit of water, chicken stock, brown sugar, lime juice, and coffee (I read it on the internet). I put my slow cooker on high because I only had 4 hours to cook it. It turns out brisket needs a very long time at a low slow temperature. My brisket did not shred as expected. This was sad but I told everyone to imagine perfectly tender shredded meat while they ate it which pretty much had the same effect.
I brought home my 5 pounds of sinewy brisket in a beautiful brown paper package, hacked it up, rubbed some cumin and chili powder on it and stuck it in my slow cooker with a bit of water, chicken stock, brown sugar, lime juice, and coffee (I read it on the internet). I put my slow cooker on high because I only had 4 hours to cook it. It turns out brisket needs a very long time at a low slow temperature. My brisket did not shred as expected. This was sad but I told everyone to imagine perfectly tender shredded meat while they ate it which pretty much had the same effect.
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| brown paper packages tied up with masking tape |
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| mmmm...a big slab of raw meat |
We had our tacos with home-grown lettuce from my parent's garden, fresh tomato-nectarine salsa, shredded monterey jack cheese, plain yoghurt, cilantro, pickled red onions (at the butcher's suggestion) and a watermelon, feta, and mint salad. Addison warmed the tortilla shells on a cast iron pan which made them just a little bit crispy and much more delicious. It was a good meal.
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| salsa fresca with nectarines |
My mom also brought some amazing "Blackberry Cordial" that she had made from the dregs of a batch of jam, which we drank out little wine glasses and felt very Anne of Green Gables. For dessert we had ice cream sandwiches again, because, why not? Usually when we see my parents, they end up cooking for us but I think I should cook for them often (you can hold me to this, mom and dad :) because it turns out they're the ultimate dinner guests. They entertain the kids, bring Blackberry cordial, and are extremely affirming even when I'm telling them to imagine part of the meal.
The rest of the week was leftovers. Yummy ones.
Thanks for reading! Hopefully you enjoyed an inside look into what is not necessarily a typical week at the Lacasse house. Scroll down for the recipes/ guidelines on how to make fresh salsa and pickled onions (both of which seem to go well with everything).
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| leftover tacos for the last time Pickled Red Onions (As told to me by the lady behind the counter at Rio Friendly Meats, combined with the recipe inside Bon Appetit magazine) Slice one red onion into thin strips and place in a glass container (that has a lid). Pour white vinegar over top about half way. Sprinkle in some salt and a spoonful of sugar. Pour boiling water overtop to full (so that the onions are covered). Mix it up (I dumped mine into a bigger bowl and then back into the glass container). Cover and keep in the refrigerator in the liquid for up to two weeks. Serve with tacos, curry, on a melt, in a sandwich, with cucumbers and dill in a salad, etc. Salsa Fresca with Nectarines (non spicy) Finely dice half a white onion, many tomatoes, some cilantro, and a few nectarines. Mix well with a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar, an extremely small squirt of honey, a squeeze of lime juice, and some salt and pepper (all to taste). Serve with tacos, curry, on an open faced sandwich, with chips or crackers, in an egg and cheese breakfast sandwich, etc. |
