Roast Beef

I have officially grown up, now that I have made my first pot roast.  (Another item from our meat order.)  This recipe is from my mother and it’s a cinch to make.  It’s so easy, you don’t even have to thaw the roast… imagine that.

Heat oven to 350 degrees.  Take frozen roast and smother it with garlic, herbs and olive oil (I’m not sure if my Mother told me to do this, but I did and it was great).  Place beef in roasting pan and add an inch or so of water.  Set timer for 2 hours and after such time, turn over roast and reset timer for 2 hours.  Don’t let the water run out, as not to damage your pan, though it’s okay to let it cook in it’s own juices for the final half hour or so of cooking.  Total time : 4 hours.

This roast needs to be started around 2 pm if you want to eat around 6 pm.  And If you’re at home anyway, why not throw this together?  Roast beef dinner is one of those meals that everyone tends to enjoy, to at least some degree (I’m talking about kids here).  It’s not too crazy and if you roast it with vegetables, it’s even better.  Personally, I still need to sort out how to cook gravy.  Gravy is harder than it looks and in spite of being the “Official Gravy Stir-er” for much of my youth, I still don’t get it.  Sigh.

The Chuck Steak

Another meat item from our meat order: the chuck steak.  I have to say, when I first opened this puppy I was slightly revolted.  It was huge, like Flintstone huge and embedded with many bones, that seemed to be in all the wrong places.  Do tell, where in the hell in the cow was this number cut from?  It was heavy, big and I had my doubts.  So I hit the internet.

What came up on Google was testament after testament about how low the quality of beef chuck steak was… I mean, is.  Ugh, I have a thing for rib eyes and have been known to drop lots of cash on them, so this was like slightly traumatic and worrisome.  But sticking to my inspiration about learning how to cook new kinds of meats, I pulled myself together and hoped for the best.

The first thing I did was sort out a decent marinade and I found one the internet, but it was really nothing special.  It was something like white wine vinegar, soy sauce, brown sugar, oil, garlic… you know, the usual.  So I crammed the hunk of low grade into the pan, poured the sauce on and then disposed of it in the fridge.  THE PLAN was to let it marinate overnight and cook it the next day for supper, but I totally procrastinated on it.  Instead I let it go for 5 days, flipping it religiously twice  day and found ways to avoid cooking it altogether.  Looking back, I think I was unconsciously putting it off so I didn’t have to eat it.  Amazing what the mind will do.  Anyway, the fifth day I knew I had to cook it.

I thought baking potatoes as a side dish and garlic bread would help brighten the meal, in the case that the chuck steak was horrible.  So with that in mind, we prepared the potatoes and bread, and threw the meat in a pan to slow cook for an hour.  And wouldn’t you know it, it smelled fantastic!  (Though it could have been the garlic or I don’t know….  I still wasn’t feeling hopeful.)  An hour passed and out of hunger we had to eat.  I took the time to cut the bones out of the steak for myself, but handed over a primitive piece (bone intact) to my b-friend.  Let’s just say, the look of his plate made me giggle.

As it turned out the steak wasn’t that bad.  It was perfectly tender (thanks to several days marinating), but I actually didn’t like the marinade (it just wasn’t amazing).  Also, the texture of the meat was a different than what I was used to, but that’s okay, it didn’t kill me.  Next time I might use the same type of marinade, but cook it in another sauce.  Actually BBQ sauce might be good.  As well, I will use the bones to make a beef broth, after all there is enough of them!

In closing I am happy to make this again.  I’m sure there is a way to perfect it and it’s good practice to get away from the expensive cuts all the time.  Having said that though, I will purchase rib eyes again, just not every time.

Ahhh Frozen Leftover Soup

I’m going to be honest about my feelings about soup: first, I really really like homemade soup and second, I really really don’t like store bought soup (or even most restaurant soup for that matter).  It’s pretty much black and white like that too.  I haven’t found a purchased soup that I completely enjoy, though I have tasted some that are tolerable, but nothing to race down the aisle for.  In our cupboards we have a Costco bunch of Mr. Noodle (other members of my family enjoy these, but actually only sort-of, as the packages have been sitting untouched for months now) and I have shelved several litres of organic chicken broth.  Anyway, Mr. Noodle doesn’t really count as “soup” anyway, more like ramen noodles in yellow salt liquid, that more often than not, remains in the bowl to be dumped down the sink.

So we just started to purchase “meat orders” from our local butcher, in order to save money on our food bill.  It’s no secret that food prices are going up and we have to learn how to adapt to these new prices.  I don’t want to compromise our quality of food.  I know not everything I cook is a HIT at our house, but I do my best to at least show that I care about the health of my family.  So one day, when everyone is all grown up, they can look back and realize food is an option when eating.  We do spend money on our groceries and we stock lots of whole foods on a weekly basis.  Plus, we eat meat, so that adds up too.  However, we can learn to prepare and enjoy cuts of meat that are more affordable than say chicken breast and rib eye steaks (though I love rib eyes!).  I need to learn how to cook these meats and the challenge inspires me.  This soup recipe is born from the whole chicken that came in our first meat order.

The chicken was first roasted (like very unique about that) and we had one meal just as such.  The next day, I took the bones and spent half the day boiling the flavour out of them and the second half of the day preparing the soup.

This soup is not fancy by any stretch of the imagination.  It has vegetables that were in the fridge (I didn’t get in all the veggies I wanted, because we didn’t have them… oh well) and the chicken was hand separated by me.  I didn’t add a lot of spices or salt and most of the grunt work was basically checking the pot every-once-and-awhile to ensure nothing was boiling over.  Pretty easy, but it did take time to prepare or rather, to wait around.  I was home all daythough, so really all it took was the extra foresight and motivation to put the carcass in a pot and then turn it into a delicious soup.  And yummy it was.

And still is!  Hence, we ate the last frozen soup this afternoon for lunch.  That is another bonus about homemade soup: you always make waaaaaay too much to eat in one meal.  So freeze it and eat it later.  Believe me, nothing goes down better when you’re pissy and sick with a cold (like I am today) and all you have to do is reheat a nutritious meal.  Also, it’s raining, so soup couldn’t taste any better.

Burger Night!

Last night was burger night at our house!  Needless to say, I had a craving, especially after eating a bunch of fast food versions as of late.  We’ve been traveling a lot over the last couple of weeks and burger joints seem to be everywhere.  Nothing compares to great sushi though… or korean.  Which too, I have eaten plenty of.

So back to my craving.  All I really really really wanted yesterday was a great burger with blue cheese and balsamic onions.  So much, I could NOT get it off my mind!  So I decided to just do it and we hit the grocery store and purchased what we needed for our burgers.  On the side, Rob didn’t want a blue cheese burger (he didn’t have the craving), but instead wanted a fried egg burger instead.  Anyway I took a picture of it too, since his looked pretty tasty as well.  Though, I would never whip one up myself (… she says this now).

I’m pretty impressed actually that I’m starting to desire food again.  It wasn’t that long ago (like maybe even 2 weeks or something), when all I wanted was peanut butter toast or a bunch of almonds.  Eating for the first 4 months of my pregnancy has been hellish and baffling as well.  Suddenly, I despised anything green and I morphed into the ultimate carb-woman.  I don’t know how many loaves of bread I ate, but it was A LOT.  Too much probably, but it was either that or barf-a-rama.  And throwing up doesn’t trump toast.

The burger platter that I prepared also included Southern Pecan and Apple Salad and rosemary fries.  Both of which were dead easy.  I changed the salad recipe slightly, in that I used romaine lettuce (which I love) and ditched the radicchio (I had some chopped radicchio handy too, but UGH, soooo bitter).

Easy rosemary fries:

A few potatoes
Sea salt
Olive oil
Couple tbsp of chopped rosemary
Oven temp 400 degrees (or maybe 450… I can’t remember)

The trick is to cut your potatoes mindfully, so that they look like fancy french fries. I’m usually super lazy cutting potatoes, so this was a test of my patience. After you chop, toss everything in a bowl and lay out in a single layer the potatoes (no stacking of any sort). Cook for 30 – 40 min, turning once. Voila!

Balsamic onions (also very easy):

Thinly slice an onion and cook slowly over med heat with olive oil. After 15 min or so, add a tbsp or so of balsamic vinegar and the same amount of brown sugar. Let cook another 5 min. Done.

You know, I would make this again in a New York minute.

Banana pancakes, a new breakfast favourite

One morning I woke up and was asked what I want for breakfast. I had already consumed my bowl of bedside almonds and needed some food ASAP. (Women who have been pregnant know exactly what I’m talking about. The ASAP is a non-negotiable and the food request is the same.) Anyway, my response was banana pancakes. Do I even like pancakes in my normal state? Ummm, noooooo. Never mind adding smooshy bananas to them. But I’m pregnant now and banana pancakes sound utterly delicious and I want them now as I write this.

Not only are pancakes overly filling (which is a quality I normally loathe), but when bananas are added they are somewhat nutritious. Or at least 10 times better than crackers and besides, I always have my prenatal vitamin to pick up where I can’t eat. (Ahhh, the prenatal vitamin.) Anyway, this is what I tell myself and having a positive frame of mind can really take a person places, especially when she’s feeling that she is not eating enough greens (yack), omegas (barf), vegetables (ugh) and healthy snacks (whatev). Everything is off these days, including my taste in food, but I’m better for it somehow. Yes, it will all make perfect sense one day, why I can’t eat like a health nut whilst pregnant, but I can do it the rest of the time. Dread!, no it doesn’t make sense, but apparently this is all very normal. Phew… I suppose.  But still I’m a bit pissy that my food habits have changed this drastically.

Rob made me these pancakes and even though these ones are slightly overcooked, it doesn’t bother me in the least. All that matters is that they are hot and have lots of melted butter on them. But no syrup and certainly no peanut butter, like the way Rob eats them. Gross-oh-la, peanut butter on banana pancakes! So gross I make him close the jar, so I can’t smell it. Sometimes, I just eat in the other room to keep my meal pure and as bland as possible. Oh the joy of breakfast.

Hearty soup that doesn’t make me feel ill

Well, well things have certainly changed since I became pregnant 9 weeks ago. One of the most obvious changes is my desire for food. I haven’t really bothered to blog as of late, because who wants to read about dry toast, cereal (with soy milk, ugh not *real* milk) and/or corn nuts? These have been my staple foods over the last couple of weeks since all-day sickness kicked in. Oh, also plain popcorn, almonds and crackers have been a big part of my diet. Mind you, if I eat one more cracker, I’m gonna lose my crackers… literally.

My first trimester has been a lot like being on a rocky boat 24-7, out in the wide open sea void landmarks, during storm season. It has been somewhat of a rough go and to make matters more nauseating, I have been hungrier than ever this whole time. Sick and starving, a very odd match indeed. To add to the magic, everything has tasted funny. Some say it takes metallic, but I realize now that that is just a fancy descriptive word that describes nothing. More like everything tastes crappy and if one wants to analyze and find the perfect descriptor, be my guest. But really, tastes like sh*t is good enough for me. Tastes like makes-me-want-to-vomit is another good choice. Speaking of which, then it came that everything I ate, sent me to the bathroom to bring it all back up. Anyway, long story short, my midwife prescribed Diclectin and my life has been a lot more normal. Sigh.

With that normality, I’m able again to cook and eat foods that I actually like. Like this soup, in our new soup pot! I decided this would be the first blog of my pregnancy, because I’m still snacking on this soup 3 bowls later! Yum yum. However, as a side, this is no guarantee that I will desire this soup ever again. That is another symptom of my pregnancy, one-hit-wonder-meals. Once I eat something once, that’s it forever. I dunno why this is so, but it makes meal planning completely impossible. Oh, and no I did not read about this phenomenon in any of my pregnancy books.

Anyway, this soup was really good. It’s basic and has one of my favourite ingredients of all time: sausage with casing removed. For some reason I feel like an honest chef when add this to my meals. Like I have some secret knowledge about sausage or something. I feel similarly when I add cilantro stems too. Damn those stems are good and they add complexity that isn’t overwhelming. I’m actually a bigger fan of the stems, than I am of the leaves, which says a lot, because I love the leaves.

Basically this soup is onions, garlic, black beans, canned tomatoes, carrots, celery, water, chicken broth, oregano, smoked paprika, cilantro stems and sausage out of the casings. Nothing too fancy, but enough that I can stomach it. At least for today.

Caldo Verde, I think…

Today marked a pretty significant day here in Nanaimo… I finally found purchasable kale at the Farmer’s Market!!  Glee!! I still don’t understand why there hasn’t been any all summer or early fall, but I guess that’s not for me to know. Sure miss all the varieties in Victoria though. Sure miss Moss St. Market. Sigh.

Anyway, I have been wanting to cook Caldo Verde for some time now, especially ever since I started missing Kale. I guess it was a desire I hung onto, just to ensure that I had a goal to find local kale. Honestly, I could have just gone to the grocery store and picked it up there, but kale doesn’t travel well and it tastes bitter by the time we get it from California. Real kale is sweet and green tasting. It’s pretty darn good.

For those of you who don’t know this, Caldo Verde is the Official Soup of Portugal! Cool, eh? And as a side note, if you google “Official Soup of Canada” (or something along these lines), it looks like it’s a tie between French Canadian Yellow Split Pea Soup and Campbell Soup. Ugh, really? And a further just as a side, I remember one time someone from England told me that she understood muffins to be an Official Canadian Snack. First I’d heard of it. Anyho, totally got side-tracked there…

I realized quickly when I started to make this soup, that I don’t have a clue what it’s suppose to taste like. Hmmmm. Not only that, but I think you need you have damn good ingredients to make this work. I mean, usually you can make due with some ingredients being a bit less sophisticated than others, but when you are only working with 5 items, there’s no where to hide. However, I’m not knocking my ingredients, because they were all solid, but I think in the future I would make a homemade broth (to put that in perspective, that’s analogous to me saying that I would make my own bread… a true rarity in my kitchen). So I’ve concluded this would be a good soup to make after Turkey Dinner or a dinner similar to that (you know, for the bones). I think having a rich, thoughtful broth would  be amazing.

Because I have never had this soup, I don’t really know if I’ve made it correctly. In spite of it’s simplicity, I am willing to bet that I have only made a version that is sort of like the real thing. I am making it a goal right here, right now to seek out the real deal. For reals. Mark my words, I will make this happen.  I don’t usually cook things I haven’t eaten before (especially “Official” things) and actually, I found it kind of awkward to do so.  I almost felt too, that it was forbidden. Or maybe that was nervous embarrassment.  I mean, there is always that off-chance that a Portuguese Grandmother is going to come waltzing into your kitchen with her big taster-tester soup spoon.  Isn’t there?

This particular recipe (that I cut and pasted from my friend Guy’s FB wall, with permission) is in kind courtesy of Marilyn Gates and it goes a little something like this…

“Yes, Nati. The Portuguese National Soup. Mince one medium onion and six cloves garlic (or less to taste). Saute in 2 tbsp good olive oil 3 mins. Stir in 6 potatoes peeled and sliced and cook 3 mins more. Add 8 cups water and simmer 20 mins while you cook a couple of linguica (Portuguese sausage) until releases fat. Smash pots and add sausage to soup. When almost read to serve add a medium bunch of kale julienned. Add salt and pepper to taste and serve drizzled with olive oil + peasant bread.”

Mmmmmmm mmmmm. Thanks Marilyn!

PS: I didn’t have linguica, so I used Hungarian Bratwurst… so wrong I know! (But delicious nonetheless.)
PPS: I don’t eat a lot of bread, so I skipped that.
PPS: (ack, I feel like I’m in a confession both)… I added a small dash of white wine. I know I KNOW, this soup has been completely bastardized. In my defense, first I already stated that I didn’t know what I was doing (so I felt some leeway there) and second, it was too salty – something had to be done. Just thankful that that Portuguese Granny didn’t come walking in…
PPPS: I have plans to add carrots to the rest of this soup tomorrow. (Did I just write that out loud?)

Sunday breakfast

I love making Sunday breakfast. It used to be, every Sunday I would roast potatoes, fry bacon, toast bread and sometimes cook eggs. (Usually I made a quick chipole and kale bean dish, in place of eggs.) It was a Tradition I was excited to wake up to and it always kicked off the day on the right foot.

However, as I got older, this menu started to feel more like a heavy, fat-ish way to begin a day and it kind of stopped working for me. So my Sunday breakfasts started to become somewhat of an intermittent practice, in spite of missing it like crazy. Lately, I have begun to cook on these mornings again.

Although the ingredients are different, the general theme remains the same. Simply I want something roasted, I want variety and I want sauce. Those three, make my Sunday.

This morning I did just that. I chopped and roasted garlic, squash and potatoes with smoked paprika and sea salt in my favourite cast iron pan (400 degrees for 35 mins). And in another, I gently heated chopped firm tofu with lemon juice, and added with garlic, leeks, and gai lan. I didn’t really cook the tofu dish, but rather just warmed it up. To the tofu dish, I added raw shredded purple carrot and then topped it off with scissor-chopped broad bean. Tahini sauce was poured over everything and breakfast was accomplished. Ahh, so nice to be back in the routine.

Tahini Sauce:

1/4 cup lemon juice
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup tamari or soy sauce
1/3 cup tahini
2 tbsp maple syrup or honey
1/4 cup water
1 chopped garlic clove
optional: 1 tbsp chopped onion

Blend.

Git-darn-it spaghetti

Last night I came home and I was starving. Literally on the verge of lunacy. I had taken Glee’na to her rehab swimming (she had knee surgery back in June) and as I was barreling down the highway, I realized that I had somehow forgotten to eat lunch before I left. To do the math, the pool is a 1.5 min drive (round trip), plus an hour swim, so for almost 3 hours, I was flying light. To put this in perspective, generally my tolerance for hunger is maximum 20 minutes. No joke.

I’m one of those people who gets completely bowled-over when I’m famished. I can’t think, I can’t concentrate, my stomach hurts and I feel totally desperate. It’s a very real and emotional experience for me, so I am usually very careful to avoid it and I’m always prepared for when hunger strikes. And no, I’m not diabetic (I’ve been checked). So on my drive, I inhaled my protein bar, but blaspheme!… all it did was throw a driblet to the swine.

So cool, I’m finally home and who do I see awaiting, but my elderly neighbour (she’s the Matriarch of the hood). Now she’s a talker and I’m not in the mood for talking. In fact, I’m not in the mood for anything. All I want to do is get THE F*CK INSIDE and consume. Fortunately, I notice that she is tied into her apron and this means she is in the middle of cooking dinner. Lucky break. She hands me a couple of gossips rags (which she has been saving for me… awww) and off she goes inside to tend to her stove. I’ll catch up with her later, when I’m normal. I really enjoy her company, I do, just not right now.

I went for lunch yesterday (in Victoria) with my friend Nicole and one of the specials was Spaghetti with Italian Sausage and Fresh Fennel. I didn’t end up ordering that, but the idea stuck with me. I have a food sensitivity to fennel, so I didn’t crave that, but I did have two locally made Italian sausages in my fridge. Walking through the door this evening, I was hell-bent on making spaghetti for dinner.

While boiling the water, I liberated the sausage from their casings. I just pushed the meat out the ends into small portions and fried them with red onion and garlic. I added some red pepper and chopped Swiss chard stalks. After that, I poured in a small can of tomatoes and squeezed in a bit of tomato paste. I pitted several kalamata olives and added them to my sauce. Finally, I added chopped Swiss chard (of course, as it goes into pretty much everything) and removed the pan from heat.

For the topping, I shredded a beet and a huge hunk of zucchini (I decided a while ago that raw shredded beets taste good on pasta). To that, I added fresh chopped basil and oregano, and mixed it all together. It’s true that I try to top most of my pasta dishes with a raw, fresh topping like this, as it’s so tasty and healthy. Also, it’s a good way to sneak in raw vegetables, especially if you find it challenging to eat raw foods.  Then, chik chika chika… atop of all of that, a brilliant spot of goat feta and blue cheese.

The moment I had been dying for…

ʔapłsqʷii

Mmmmmm ʔapłsqʷii.

This delicacy is a type of smoked salmon (sort of kind of like a salmon jerky, but not exactly), that is Traditional to Nuu-chah-nulth People.  I just happen to be a lucky woman on Friday morning when I arrived at work in Port Alberni and an Elder was sitting in the lobby selling bags of ʔapłsqʷii, that he had made in his smoke house.  YES PLEASE!  My co-worker and I put our funds together and between the two of us $10 was found.

I was very fortunate during my time at Anacla, when I worked for the Huu-ay-aht First Nations,to learn the Nuu-chah-nulth alphabet and some words and phrases (the Nuu-chah-nulth alphabet is much larger than ours).  An Elder named Angie Joe came out every two weeks and taught a language class that was well attended by a core group of community members.  (I hear that class is still going and it warms my heart to receive such news.)  It was during those classes that I learned how to read and pronunciate the language.  I still struggle to spell the words though and my friend Rob Dennis Jr. helped me spell ʔapłsqʷii.

ʔapłsqʷii is a challenging word for me to say.  It has 3 sounds that are not part of the English language and those letters are ʔ ł qʷ, and the “ii” is pronounced as “ee” (I have linked it, but for some reason the audio doesn’t work when it’s linked.  However if you google “Nuu-chah-nulth alphabet, you will get this site and it does work).  People often pronounce it as “up-skwee”, but it’s slightly more complex than that.  More like “up-lth-skwee”… but the qʷ sounds comes from a deep part of your throat.  I have been practising the pronunciation since yesterday and I’m confident that it will come easier to me.

Every Friday on my drive to Port Alberni, I become emotional when I enter into Nuu-chah-nulth Territory.  It’s almost like I have arrived into the solace and security of a Great Grandmother, one that you can tell anything to and you’re free to feel whatever you want.  I find myself able to openly feel things that I normally contain and then easily let them go.  So by the time I get to work, as you can probably imagine, I need some nourishment to build up my strength again.  I’m not talking about a coffee or anything like that, but some real food that truly feeds me.  So to be surprised by this gift of ʔapłsqʷii not only was I fed, but as well I was shown again that Nuu-chah-nulth Territory is a deeply loving place that emanates comfort.  For those of you who have been to Tofino or Ucluelet, you know what I’m talking about.