, , , , ,

Should I have made the pie?

I didn’t make it, but it was fantastic all the same. Maybe because I didn’t make it…

Yes.

Now that is out of the way, now that we are done with the dinner, I think some musing on Thanksgiving are in order. Not the existential commentary on what we’re thankful for (healthfamilykidslife) but more musing on the zeitgeist of producing a turkey dinner and just how much suffering has to go into the creation of it.

In Canada we generally have two yearly occasions for turkey: Thanksgiving and Christmas. It feels like I have had more than my share of turkeys and several of those I have made myself. In fact, one Thanksgiving about 15 years ago we had 3 turkey dinners in 3 days – none of which I had to cook. Thereafter it was known as the tri-turkey weekend and we promised ourselves (that is, my wife and I) we would never do it again. Mae West might have been on to something but when it comes to turkey you can have too much. The Thanksgiving following the tri-turkey weekend we spent at a beach apartment in Tofino on Vancouver Island – one of the most amazing places on this planet. It remains one of the most magical Thanksgivings we have ever had. Oh, I boiled up some crab for dinner that year. It was epic.

This year my folks could finally come for dinner and we had them over along with my nephew who is studying nearby. They joined my family – my older daughter was back from university for the weekend. Plus the dog, of course. Her counter-surfing is shameless but rather impressive in its effectiveness.

I digress. We did the turkey in the oven following the recipe out of The Best Recipe cookbook. Ditto on the gravy and the stuffing. The brussels sprouts were a recipe from Nightingale Restaurant here in Vancouver (roasted, with concord grapes) and the squash was from the cookbook Nopi, by Yotam Ottolenghi. Mashed potatoes were done by the spud-master himself, my father. My kids snickered (actually snickered. It was audible) when I suggested I could mash the potatoes. Apparently there were plans in place to stage a coup if I reached for the potato masher. That’s the thanks you get for being in the kitchen all day. Cranberry sauce was the recipe from The Silver Palate Cookbook.

Everything was… Perfect. Well, the bird was cooked about an hour too early but a large metal mixing bowl and a beach towel took care of that issue. It rested. For quite some time. I also scorched the bread for the stuffing (I don’t stuff the bird – you get a better tasting turkey when it isn’t stuffed). That required a bit of fancy footwork, but we avoided catastrophe. (Lucky). Besides, what were the guests going to do? Not pay the bill? Put a negative review on Yelp? Feel free.

It got me thinking, as these things sometimes do, about festive meals gone by and how they seem to have an importance much more than what one might find at a non-festive meal. It isn’t Christmas time yet, so I don’t want to get too carried away about how challenging Christmas can be, but for Thanksgiving (and we’re talking Canadian Thanksgiving – a lite version of the American holiday, for sure) it’s rather interesting.

How important is authenticity? What I mean by that is how important is it for things to be from scratch and to be from the hand of the chef? My mother often talks about how great it would be to order everything from Whole Foods and have it delivered, ready to eat. But then in her defence she has done more than her fair share of turkey dinners and many of the early ones for her involved intoxicated family members arguing vehemently over the design of the flag (the Maple Leaf, that is) or whether or not the Prime Minister was a communist.

Can you imagine trying to put the dinner on the table in that household? And would you get any thanks for it afterwards? I somehow doubt it. Any food item would suffice in those circumstances.

Thankfully sober heads prevail these days and I can cook with relative abandon.

This year’s choice of pie, though, got me thinking. What happened is that Rosa, who cuts my wife’s hair and who has excellent taste in fine food, suggested that a local chain restaurant not known to me for their pumpkin pies had fantastic pumpkin pie. Worthy of buying and serving to guests and close family, no less.

And it was excellent. The turkey was fabulous as well, even if it wasn’t organic. Still cost $85, though.

But to what end must one go for the perfect mashed potatoes? Or the perfect brussels sprouts? (full disclosure, I like brussels but they do need to be roasted to near-oblivion and a good dose of bacon never hurt).

If it is about the family and if I’m fairly certain the reviews will be good regardless of the level of ingredients then perhaps it’s not out of the question to buy the pie once in a while. Or to just bake the damn brussels and be done with them.

But I draw the line at a processed turkey, pre-stuffed and cooked from frozen. That’s heresy. My mother-in-law had one a couple of years ago. I don’t know what got into her. Perhaps she has tired of the unending work involved in getting a Thanksgiving dinner on the table. She is 80, after all.

And now I must grudgingly admit that the turkey was amazing. Must have been the hand of the chef. It’s the only possible explaination.

S

c

/0 Comments/by
, ,

Never seen something quite like this.

Now I’m all hungry.

All of a sudden, on Saturday evening, the kids were gone and my wife and I were at loose ends for dinner. Usually we have something on the go but this weekend was not like that. My wife suggested we go to Oca Pastificio, a local restaurant where they make fresh pasta, and only fresh pasta. Well, they have a few other bits, but it’s mostly a pasta place.

We had the tasting menu and a bottle of nice Italian wine. I do love throwing myself on the mercy of a chef and asking for some great food. It’s a lot easier than having to decide. And goodness knows there may well be something in the back that will absolutely blow me away, and who better to get that to me than the chef?

The above is one of the dishes we had. It’s a strip of fresh pasta with a line of ricotta and oregano down the middle. Then it’s folded in half and twisted up into a crown like this. I’m assuming it’s cooked in a shallow pan of water and then drained. It’s then finished with butter and lemon.

It was amazing. I bet, in total, there aren’t more than 10 ingredients in this dish, one of which is salt. And one of which is water. This dish is the epitome of what I love about Italian food. Simple. But at the same time, rather creative and really tasty.

My wife and I took a moment to be obnoxious and picked apart the dish (figuratively as well as literally) and sort of figured out how it was done.

I gotta try this one at home. My pizza kick might be coming to a close, to be replaced by a pasta kick. Not a bad nutritional segue, if I do say so, myself.

/0 Comments/by
, , , , , ,

You want me to what? Ok, if you insist.

Step one: Lots of heat

When my family and I visited London last year, a friend insisted that we go to Nopi. He told me that we could sit anywhere – even the basement was fine. And so we made reservations and went. We did end up downstairs, sitting at a massive marble table, surrounded by racks of storage for the kitchen.

Dinner was amazing. I remember being totally blown away and even the kids thought it was great.

We came back to Vancouver and at some point in the following months I ordered the restaurant cookbook.

I might have been in a bit of a funk, post-London. It might have been the grey fall weather. Maybe I needed some new eyeglasses. Possibly all three, but in any case I found the cookbook really unimpressive. I looked through the recipes and nothing jumped out at me at all. It felt like the entire volume was not to my palate.

But I decided I had better try something, so I settled on the ‘Burnt Green Onion Dip with Curly Kale’.

Holy cow. I was absolutely amazed. Other recipes have followed and they have been roundly incredible. The only drawback is that if you want to cook any of the meals you had best read the recipe really carefully several days in advance because some things take several days to create. The ‘Strained Ricotta with Blackcurrant Compote and Rhubarb’ takes a week to make, I swear. It’s worth it, but man, days pass.

But I’m writing about the burnt onions. The intro to the recipe states:

“One important point to remember: there’s no such thing as overcharring your onions, so hold your nerve at the grill… The more burnt they are, the better and more smoky they will taste.”

After charring my pizza, this was music to my ears. I love recipe instructions like that.

Getting there – need a bit more time

I love the idea of not being able to go too far when cooking something. I guess it’s like roasting eggplant. More is better.

Of course, I do wonder if maybe I should have kept them on the grill for longer? There always seems to be something to improve upon.

/0 Comments/by
, ,

What’s for Dinner?

“All human history attests

That happiness for man, – the hungry sinner! –

Since Eve ate apples, much depends on dinner.”

~Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto XIII, stanza 99

Boy, we have this question a lot in our house. Sometimes it comes from me, sometimes from the kids, sometimes my wife. Strangely, the dog only worries about whether or not she is going to be fed, not what it will be. I guess years of kibble will do that to anyone.

But what a loaded question for the humans in the house:

  • Sometimes it’s a request for information, as in, “Can you check the calendar and see what we have on for dinner tonight?”
  • Sometimes it’s a gauge as to whether or not one (or both) of the kids are interested in sticking around or figure it’s not worth the wait. Ever wonder why we don’t have any meals that everyone hates but ‘should’ eat? It’s because no one would show up to enjoy it with me. And I’m not eating liver and onions alone.
  • Sometimes, though, it carries a lot more weight. Sometimes it’s a plea, “Please figure out what we’re going to eat this evening, as everyone will be hangry and I just don’t have the resources (time and mindspace) to figure it out.”

The first two options are easy to field. For the third, thankfully, we usually have a few dinner items in the freezer for times like these. Tomato sauce and meatballs isn’t particularly pretty (visually or health-wise) as a dinner but it feeds everyone and it means we don’t have to spend a bomb on ordering in marginal, lukewarm food. I’m not sure how things are in your town, but having something delivered from a restaurant in Vancouver is generally underwhelming.

Thankfully, dinner plans at our house haven’t yet involved Biblical serpents and the knowledge that we brought down the entirety of civilization, but there is a certain raised stress level until we can figure it out. Once dinner plans are in place, the day is easier to tolerate.

Of course, if a certain someone forgets to pull something out of the freezer or pick up ingredients at the grocery store then it’s all for naught. Not that I would ever have had that happen to me. Nope.

/0 Comments/by