Eating Outside the Bowl

I’ve developed a habit over the years. Pretty much all of the dinners I cook for myself can be eaten out of a bowl. I’m not exactly sure how this habit developed. Growing up, dinners at home took pretty much the same form every day – protein + side dish + side salad. Yet, when I moved out I developed a cooking style that I called “throw a bunch of stuff in a pan and add noodles”. Admittedly some of the early stuff was pretty meager. KD with steamed broccoli mixed in? I suppose it meets some definition of dinner in a slightly-elevated-student-special kind of way. My cooking has evolved over the years, and particularly in the last year, but I still find that even those dinners that aren’t eaten out of a bowl could be. There are a few reasons for this, I suppose. I like Asian food, which lends itself to noodle and rice bowls. Bowl food can usually be cooked quickly and doesn’t take tons of pots and pans in the preparation. Bowl food lends itself well to making single portions or to making good lunch leftovers. Though if I’m honest, I’d say that I eat bowl food because I eat dinner on the couch in front of the TV. Bowl dinners are easily eaten without a table. Bowl in one hand, fork in the other and you’re good to go.

Tonight’s dinner, however, was decidedly outside the bowl. In fact, it’s very much outside my norm altogether. It’s meat. On the BONE. With a side dish. And instead of the usual 20 minutes, today’s meal took over THREE HOURS to prepare. Well, to be fair, most of that time I was cleaning the house and puttering around and blogging and watching The Holiday on TV while this fabulous meal cooked slowly in the oven and filled my house with the most fabulous smells.

All winter the food blogs have been full of recipes for braised meats. It seemed everyone was taking cuts of meat that can be otherwise tough and cooking them “low and slow” until they are falling-off-the-bone tender. I wanted to try. And since this may be (sweet Jesus Lord willing) the last cold weekend of the year, today was the day.

Braised Short Ribs with Braised White Beans and Swiss Chard

For the short ribs (adapted from Everybody Likes Sandwiches):
2 beef short ribs
Olive oil
4 shallots
4 cloves of garlic
1 large can diced tomatoes (or if you’re like me use whole tomatoes and smash them with a potato masher)
1 bottle good red wine (or 1 bottle minus 1 glass)
3 sprigs rosemary
¾ tsp thyme (or 3 sprigs if you remembered to buy fresh)
Beef stock (or vegetable)
Salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Season the short ribs with salt and pepper then sear in a heavy bottomed pan or dutch oven. Be sure to brown well on all sides. Remove the ribs and add in the shallots and garlic to sauté a bit. Add in the tomatoes, pour in the wine and throw in the herbs. Add the ribs back to the pan and add stock as necessary until they are covered in liquid. Bring it to the boil for a bit to let the liquid reduce slightly. Cover and put in the oven for the next 3 or 4 hours.

For the beans (adapted from Choosy Beggars):
1 can navy beans
Olive oil
½ medium yellow onion
2-3 cloves garlic
¼ tsp red pepper flakes
1 sprig rosemary
½ tsp thyme (or 1-2 sprigs)
Bay leaf
¼ tsp dried oregano (1-2 sprigs)
½ - ¾ cup chicken stock, divided
Scant ¼ cup kalmata olives
4 cups swiss chard
Lemon juice
Salt and pepper

Chop the onion and finely mince the garlic. Sauté on low in olive oil 10-12 minutes until golden (but not burned!). Drain and rinse beans. Add to pan with ½ cup chicken stock. Nestle herbs in on top and cover pan to simmer for 15-20 minutes, stopping to stir once or twice (if at 15 mins the beans haven’t started to break down, up the heat and simmer for 8 more mins or so). Using the back of the spoon, mash up some of the beans, leaving about half of them whole. Add more stock, half at a time as needed. Pit and coarsely chop the olives. Wash the swiss chard and cut out the stalks. Add to the pan and fold into the beans until just wilted. Season with salt and pepper and squeeze in a bit of lemon juice (less than ½ of a lemon).

Putting it all together:
Nestle a rib on a lovely bed of beans and greens and dig in.

Plate required.

Tarte Tatin

So I have neither fallen into a black hole, nor abandoned this blog and cooking altogether. I have just been busy with work and life and while I've been cooking, I would not categorize my recent meals as worthy of either photos or prose. I have taken flak for the lack of posting. Two people (i.e., one half of my readership) commented on my silence. Rest easy. I am back. This Thanksgiving long weekend was a festival of culinary pursuits chez moi. I have 3 recipes that have been tried and photographed, to be written about and posted at appropriate intervals.

We'll start with Tarte Tatin (aka Boob Tart*).

I have been obsessed with making tarte tatin since early this week. I had the Food Network on in the background while I was cooking one evening and Laura Calder's French Food at Home was on. Laura Calder, for those who are not familiar, is a Canadian who spent time in France (10 years according to her Food Network bio). Laura cooks in an enviably beautiful kitchen somewhere. I would kill someone and step over their body for that kitchen. It's all big windows looking out onto a lovely yard... Anyhow, Laura herself tends to make food that I like to watch but would never really cook myself. And she does so in a series of boob-tastic summer dresses or cocktail frocks (Choosy Beggars has a great article about Laura, which is totally bang on). Anyhow, back here at home I turned up the volume and headed into my kitchen (wishing that it was Laura's kitchen but whatever).

Anyhow, this show was all about fruit and different recipes for fruit desserts by season. Some of these were ridiculous. She did some kind of baked custard with berries that included some sort of tart berry that she left ON THE VINE. She just chucked a sprig full of these things, vine and all, into the custard and baked it up. Who wants to serve that? Your guests would be there with their spoons thinking how do I elegantly eat this thing? Also, I call total bullshit on a tv chef who gives as a "recipe" straight faced instruction to cut a watermelon into wedges and arrange it on a fancy plate. Seriously Laura? I've been cooking for all of 5 minutes but I could've figured out that watermelon thing on my own (edited to add that apparently they were drizzled in rose water. Still). More to the point, she also cooked tarte tatin.

Now I enjoy tarte tatin. It's probably the dessert I order most often in Paris (perhaps as the way to avoid the creme brule). But it is not my enjoyment of this simple but lovely apple dessert that made me obsessed with making it all week. No. I became obsessed with tarte tatin because of Laura's absolute butchery of its pronounciation. Jesus. How can someone study in France and not pick up the difference in pronounciation between "in" and "en"? Every time she said "tarte tatON" I had to cleanse my palate by saying "tarte tatIN". I suppose that I said it so many times (and it is fun to say!) that I just had to make it.

Not being blessed with having purchased a pretty, pretty specialty copper-bottom tarte tatin pan in France like Laura's, I went out and bought an all purpose cast iron skillet and went to work. On Saturday afternoon pastry was prepared. Apples were peeled. Blood was shed (very sharp peeler!). Caramel was mopped up from my stovetop (thank God for that glass-top stove). Tarte was cooled and turned onto a plate. Damn if it didn't look exactly like Laura's, even if it smelled a little on the well done side.

On Sunday morning I could no longer deny the fact that it was more than well done. It was burnt. I had burnt the caramel. It smelled burnt and sadly, according to the tiny speck of apple I cut to try, it tasted burnt. Since I had offered to take it to a dinner party, burnt wouldn't do. So back to the store I went. New apples were purchased. Serious consideration was given to purchasing a back-up pie in case attempt #2 was a wash-out but I decided to be confident and carry on (planning to have my pie completed in time to assess and run back to the store before closing for a replacement if necessary).

Fortunately attempt #2 was a success.

Tarte Tatin (adapted from Laura Calder)

10 royal gala apples

1/2 cup butter

1 1/3 cup sugar

Make pastry for shell. I used 1/2 of Martha's Pate Brise recipe, which was perfection and totally easy.

In a 10 inch pan (cast iron or something else that can go into the oven), melt the butter and sugar together. I did this on medium low and it took around 20 minutes. Watch it like a chemistry experiment. Stir it as it goes through many phases until it looks and smells like caramel (note, do NOT wait until it smells like slightly burnt caramel!).

Peel, halve and core apples. Once you have caramel, stack the apples sideways in the pan. Nestle them tightly in a circle around the outside of the pan and fill in the middle. Pack as many of those bad boys in as you can. Cook on low for 20 minutes. Flip the apples so that the other side can caramelize. If apples have shrunk and there is space, add more. Cook for another 20 minutes.

Roll out pastry and cover apples, tucking the edges in. Bake in a 400 degree oven for 10 minutes or so until the shell turns golden brown (baking on a cookie sheet is a good idea in case there is leakage). Cool for 10 minutes. Cover skillet with a plate and turn out the tarte (note I drained of excess liquid from the skillet before turning it out).

Serve with creme fraiche.

*According to my francophone friends, Laura's pronounciation of tarte tatin translates to "boob tart". Those who know me will not be surprised that this blog has 'gone to the boobs' (most will be surprised that it took 4 posts to get there). In the words of one of Sunday's dinner party guests, after I had regaled them all with the tarte tatin story "You should have led with 'boob tart'". Lesson learned.

Dowry Chicken

So I did not get set on an all beets all the time diet, though I did make a return visit to the Bryson's stall to buy more this weekend. Nor did I intend to abandon this blog for an entire week. Unfortunately life got in the way of my new hobby. Or perhaps one new hobby got in the way of another. Hopefully the quality of the photos on this blog will improve over time as I put my photograpy lessons to use in the kitchen. All that rambling to say, I owe you a post on roasted chicken.

For me, roasting a chicken seems a very "wifely" thing to do. I have no idea where I got this from. My model wives growing up did not roast chickens. I saw my mom make tons of sugo and countless other dishes. There were roasted birds as well -- turkeys and cornish game hens -- but I don't remember a chicken coming out of our oven. And I'm damn sure that my other model of wifely duty, Carol Brady, never roasted a chicken (though I'm sure that Alice roasted dozens!). As such, I never thought much about roasting my own chickens. I've found that the ones that Loblaws sells off the rotisserie have satisfied my roasted chicken needs thus far. But early on as I started thinking about learning to cook and started reading recipes on food blogs I came upon a roast chicken recipe (probably on Orangette). I suddenly had this very 1950's thought that a woman should know how to roast a chicken for her man. And being without a man at present, I thought it a skill that I should acquire so as to have on hand once there is a man for whom to cook. To carry the old fashioned, conforming to the patriarchy thought even futher (ahem!) I decided that a roast chicken was something that I should add to my dowry.

So with a cool-ish Sunday afternoon to myself, I set upon roasting my first chicken. Actually, I need to back this up 24 hours because my culinary relationship with the chicken began on Saturday afternoon when I took my bird out of its packaging, stuffed herbs under its skin and rubbed salt all over it. Yes, it seems my kitchen can double as a chicken spa (er, except I suppose that the chicken's enjoyment of the process is lessened in that he's dead).

Sunday I popped that bad boy in the oven and two eardrum piercing wails of the smoke alarm later I was enjoying the best damn roasted chicken I have EVER tasted. Seriously. The HERBS people. They were all infused in the meat. And while I didn't eat the skin (and don't think that denying myself THAT didn't near about kill me) it looked crispy and perfect. Without a doubt my little chicken kicked the dessicated ass of every Loblaws chicken to ever enter my home.

This skill is firmly in my dowry to be busted out when the right guy comes along. Until then, I will be roasting many, many more chickens, whether there's a man around to eat them or not.

Dowry Chicken

(adapted from Sassy Radish who seems to follow the Zuni Cafe method)

1.25 - 1.5 kg chicken

Herbs (I used rosemary, thyme and oregano)

Salt

The day before cooking clean the chicken and dry it, then tuck herbs under the chicken's skin where there is space (breasts, legs) and throw a few into the cavity. Let him sit under saran in the fridge overnight.

To roast it, pre-heat the oven to 450 degrees. This high heat will ensure the perfect moist meat to crispy skin ratio. If you cook in my house, it will also ensure that the smoke alarm will sound (seriously not only the beeping but an electronic lady yelling FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! Of course I yelled back COOKING! COOKING! COOKING! because it made me feel better).

Roast the chicken breast side up for 30-35 mins then flip that bird (this is when you will want to turn the fan on to silence the electronic lady). Cook for 15 minutes then flip again (fan again) for a final 10 minutes of cooking.

With the fan on (this is mostly a reminder for me at this point for when I cook this again) take the chicken out and set it on a plate or board to rest. Once it's well rested. Dig in. Then box the leftovers in tupperware for chicken salad lunches all week.

The One Before

So the first post on this blog was supposed to be about beets. But this summer being what it has been, today was one of the best summer Saturdays we've had all year. And I just couldn't commit to oven-roasting beets on such a nice summer day. Cue change of plans. I wanted something quick, easy and light. Cue rosemary potatoes on the barbeque. They're lovely. They're flavourful and they make me smile with gratitude for this late summer barbeque day.

Barbeque Herbed Potatoes

(I have no idea of measurements here because I just threw the following together)

Potatoes (I had small red ones from the market in my cupboard)

Rosemary

Oregano

Parsley

Thyme

Olive oil

Balsamic vinegar

Garlic (just chucked in a few whole, peeled cloves)

Salt

Cut the potatoes to even size chunks and toss them with all the other stuff. Dump them out onto tin foil (shiny side up) and wrap like a gift package. Drop on the grill for 20 minutes, or until potatoes are fork tender.

My lovely summer dinner of these potatoes with a hot fennel sausage from Luciano's and a simple salad of frise, arugula and heirloom tomato came together just in time to catch a little bit of natural light for a photo op. This food blogging thing is going to get weird in the winter. I'll have to cook dinner in the middle of the day to get any natural light for the photos! Oh well, here's to dragging out the summer.

Tomorrow it's all about the beets.

Experimentation (aka the one with the Beets)

I have no memory of ever eating a beet. AI know there were beets around my house. They came in cans and every once in awhile Mom would empty a can out into a small saucepan and heat them up to accompany dinner for her and Dad. They never appeared on my dinner plate. Nevertheless, I have lived comfortably in the certainty that I do not like beets.

But this summer the beets have been calling to me. They call from the food blogs, where so many people write rapturously about what they've done with the beets in their CSA box or from their farmers' market. The photos are gorgeous. Pretty, pretty red beets everywhere. And then today at my own farmers' market, while getting my supply of gorgeous heirloom tomatoes from my new favourite stall (Bryson's Organic farm), I spy the heirloom beets. And they are things of beauty. There is something just so earthy about beets, which I suppose is a bit "duh" since they are pulled from the earth, but they have a homely beauty.

Don't you think?

I decided that my first foray into the world of beets would be with a salad. Nothing too complicated to interfere with the beet flavours. They would have to shine and prove to me that I like them but just didn't know it yet. The salad I made was inspired by one on the Rachelle Eats Food blog http://rachelleeatsfood.blogspot.com/.

Beet Salad

1 bunch beets
arugula
goat cheese
pine nuts
1-3-5 vinagrette

To roast the beets, cut the tops off and wrap them up, salted and olive oiled, it a foil package. Roast at 400 degrees for about an hour, until you can stab the beets with a fork. Once cooked, let cool a bit before peeling and slicing (gloves are recommended for this but my beets weren't super red so it didn't seem to be a problem).

The vinagrette I use (the one that means I will never buy a store salad dressing again) is super simple to remember. I got it from Orangette http://orangette.blogspot.com/ (aka, the woman who inspired me to start cooking in the first place).

1tbs dijon mustard
3tbs red wine vinegar
5tbs olive oil
salt

So I assembled the salad and dug in...

And the verdict? Well, let's just say that this food blog may be over on day 2 because I may just make this salad for every meal for every day for the rest of my damn life. It was THAT good. Fortunately I have enough beets for one more.

Oh yeah, I also roasted a chicken. But I'll save that story for another day.