Happy Victoria Day: My Seoulful supper

Victoria Day fell early this year.  May Two-Four as it's known in some circles, is a moveable feast that occurs on the Monday before 25 May.  For monarchists, it marks Queen Victoria's birthday and marks Canadian celebrations for Queen Elizabeth II's birthday. For others, the long weekend is the day cottages open, gardens are turned over, and summer (unofficially) begins.

To be honest, it was hard to see last weekend as the start of the hot season.  After days of warming weather and sunshine, I was reminded that I live in Canada.  Days after filling my planter with twizzled corkscrew grass, bursting fuchsia, and trailing plants, the skies greyed and the wind blew cold.

I've lurked in nurseries for about a month, looking for inspiration and a promise of warmer weather.  I fully admit to not knowing what I'm doing in the garden and I rarely know what's in the trays and containers loaded into my cart.  Whenever those green-aproned attendants ask to assist, I hand over my BlackBerry's trove of pictures of flowers and plants I've seen in other people's gardens.  My soil type is dirt--the kind that has worms deep down, beyond the miner bees.  The amount of light my patch receives is better predicted by a roulette wheel than experience, thanks to the condo manager's tree butchers.  My garden faces front, sort of.

A few weeks ago I looked wistfully at a display of hundreds of fluffy petaled flowers, their colours reminiscent of hot climate countries: blooms of saffron, cerise, beet, mango and mustard reminded me that what was under a coverlet of white, and is now a muddy brown will be alive with brilliant colours.  An aproned guide whispered it was too cold to plant them.  I should have bought some anyway and kept them in my dining room window. One week later those pots were gone and replaced  beacons of yet-to-come frost warnings: snow white, blush white, apple white, and pallid, slightly greyed shades of lavender, lemon and underripe cherry.

I left with two dahlias -- one that looked like an exploding yellow-tinged pink grapefruit, and another of the deepest and most lascivious pink.

No sooner were they in the ground than I scrambled to protect my prizes from yet more frost.  My neighbours are used to my eccentricities, but I'm certain I raised some eyebrows by protecting my front garden's latest inhabitants with upturned pots and basins.

This weekend the extended forecast has lulled me into believing Spring frosts are history. The protective covers gone and my potted herbs and decorative containers are back in the sunshine.   I don't want to have to play the protect the plants jig until autumn. But I will.  If I have to.

But that's this weekend, not last.

Victoria Day weekend's bright, beautiful skies masqued cooler temperatures.  Normally I'd keep to a simple holiday weekend menu of seared burgers, salad and fries.  A Victoria sponge and fruity scones also make an almost obligatory appearance.

But not this year.  In my mind, it was just too cold for any of it.  My mind remained with those lost sari-coloured blooms as I rummaged through my freezer.

The bundle of Jacob's Ladders of beef short ribs thawed as I found some red-spined Swiss chard in the bigscarymegamart.  For whatever reason, I fixated on a Korean-inspired supper.  While Korea's climate strictly isn't tropical, I don't believe they endure -30C temps for weeks at a time, as we do in here in the Great White North.

Feeling rather lazy and in an "it's close enough" mood, I springboarded (sprungboard?) off this Asian-Style Braised Short Ribs recipe. Don't let the unexciting umber fool you--it belies a memory of south east Asia, borrowing from several territories.  One of my favourite Korean side dishes is a cold, sesame'd spinach dish called "sigeumchi namul." It's just as easy to make as the the short ribs, and adaptable to any green leafy that flutters by.  Served with rice and a vinegary cucumber and radish salad it made a rather lovely supper.


Korean-style Swiss chard
Adapted from Maangchi's sigeumchi namul recipe

1 bunch of Swiss Chard, chopped into 3-5cm widths
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 green onion, finely sliced
2dspn/2tsp  20ml soy sauce
1tsp  5ml nam pla
1 Tbsp  15ml sesame oil
pinch sugar
a spoonful of sesame seeds

Blanch the greens in salted water.  After rinsing in ice water, gently squeeze out the water.

Mix the garlic, green onion, soy sauce, nam pla, sesame oil and sugar.  Add the greens and mix by hand.  Sprinkle in the seeds and toss by hand.

cheers!
jasmine
I'm a quill for hire!

Happy Easter! A simple Sunday Roast

I'm a wee bit behind in uploading these pictures, but better late than never.

I must admit I was at a loss for this year's Easter Supper.  Just not really enthused by any idea that came my way.  I suppose that's why I decided to go back to basics and have a simple Sunday Roast.  Nothing OTT, nothing garishly glam, no feigned humblebragging.

It's been a few years since I last did a roast beef. I just fell out of the habit, I suppose.

Clockwise, from top left:
Yorkshire Puddings
Roast beef with Horseradish Sauce
Maple Harissa Roasted Carrots
Peas, Dijon'd Mashed Potatoes and Gravy

What I didn't photograph?  The apple crumble, but here's the just-out-of-the-oven tweet

Apple crisp for tomorrow's Easter Supper out of the oven and bubbly. pic.twitter.com/0qK7CricBM
— Jasmine (@cardamomaddict) April 4, 2015

I consider roast beef a "back to basics" food.  Nothing fancy, nothing pretentious--when sharing a meal with good friends, you don't need pretention.  Just a good piece of meat, roasted until burnished on the outside, and blushing in the middle.  Delia Smith guided my very first roast, and is the inspiration behind the dusting the meat receives.  The temperature and time are from Nigella's How To Cook.

I like to have about 250-300g for a boneless roast/ 325-400g for a roast that has a bone, per person.  That all said, I tend to overpurchase for a couple of reasons: I think everyone should have as much as they want at a feast, and really...I want leftovers to sustain me through the upcoming days with beef dips, beef and spinach salads and Vietnamese-inspired noodle bowls.

Roast Beef 
Serves 4-5 people

1.5kg (3.3lb) roast
15ml/1Tbsp flour
15ml/1Tbsp powdered mustard
15ml/1Tbsp black pepper
10ml/1Dspn/2tsp powdered mushrooms
1-2 onions, sliced in 1cm thick rounds
Salt
Water or stock

Pat the joint with paper towels and let stand, unwrapped in the fridge for 4-24hrs.

Remove from fridge, pat again and let come to room temperature (about 30-45minutes).

Preheat oven to 450F/230C.

When the oven has come to temp, mix the flour, mustard, pepper and powdered mushrooms together and roll the joint in the mixture.  Tie the roast with cotton string.

Arrange the onions in the roasting tin, so they become a trivet on which the roast will cook.  Place the roast on the onions and lightly sprinkle with salt. Pour a little water or beef broth in the bottom of the tin, to avoid smoking your kitchen.

Roast for 15 minutes.  Turn down the oven temp to 180C/350F.  Tent the roast with aluminum foil for and return to the oven for 20 minutes.  Remove the foil and return to the oven for another 25 minutes (or until the roast's internal temperature reaches whatever safe cooking range, for whatever level of doneness you follow).

Remove from oven and tent with the foil for at least 20 minutes before carving.

Make gravy from the pan drippings, as you normally would.  Serve the onions, if you wish as a side dish.

cheers!
jasmine
  I'm a quill for hire!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!: Guinness-braised beef short rib poutine

Happy St. Patrick's Day! 

Some of you may recall my mission to create Guinness-braised short ribs, and what I created was, in fact, Guinness-braised long ribs.  This year, I pledged to rectify this situation.  My plan was simple:

1) Buy beef short ribs when my darling butcher put them on special.

2) Label said shortribs.

3) Freeze said labelled short ribs.

4) Easily retrieve actual short ribs from the freezer, thaw and make Guinness-braised short ribs.

I am happy to report that my mission was successful.

I bought; I labelled; I froze; I retrieved; I thawed; I made Guinness-braised short ribs.

Although they were really good with a side of mashed potatoes and steamed veggies, I didn't actually want Guinness-braised short ribs. 

I wanted Guinness-braised short rib poutine.  Tender meat in a rich gravy, over a bed of golden crispy-on-the-outside and fluffy-on-the-inside chips.  Sauteed mushrooms strewn overtop and soft bleu cheese lightly blessing the entire glorious plate.  

Yes.  That's what I wanted.  And that's exactly what I got: a warm dinner plate of happy.

Of course the main part of this recipe is the short rib recipe itself.  I went back to my Steak and Guinness stew recipe and made a few minor adjustments.  The poutine itself is a non-recipe recipe, and very much up to your individual palate:

Guinness-braised shortrib Poutine

Ingredients

Chunky chips

Guinness-braised short ribs, meat cut off the bone (recipe follows)

Gravy from the above short ribs

Sauteed mushrooms

Bleu Cheese (Cashel, if you want to continue the Irish theme)

Guinness-braised shortribs
Serves four

Ingredients
Marinade:
1 clove garlic, minced
1dspn/2tsp/10ml mustard powder
0.5tsp/2.5ml black pepper
375ml/1.5c Guinness (or any other brand of stout you prefer)

1kg/2lbs beef shortribs, cut into 4cm (1.5") pieces
olive oil
butter
400g/14oz mushrooms, sliced
0.75tsp/3.75ml salt
0.75tsp/3.75ml black pepper
2 medium onions, slivered nose-to-tail
2 fat cloves garlic, minced
2 celery ribs, finely diced
1 carrot, finely diced
625ml/2.5c diced tomatoes, fresh or tinned
125ml/0.5c Guinness (as above...or any other brand of stout you prefer)
375ml/1.5c beef broth
125ml/0.5c tomato paste
1tsp paprika (hot, preferably)
3 sprigs thyme
2 sprigs rosemary
2 bay leaves
40g/3Tbsp/45ml soft butter
25g/3Tbsp/45ml ap flour
1-2Tbsp/15-30ml Worcestershire sauce

Method
Mix marinade ingredients together in a zippy bag and add shortrib pieces. Let marinate overnight.

Remove the meat from the zippy bag, and pat dry.  Do not throw away the marinade.

Heat your brasier pan or dutch oven over a hob and slick the bottom with oil.  Sear the meat on all sides and set aside.

Add more oil, if necessary and add the tomato paste and fry until the sugars caramelise and the paste's colour deepens to a brick red.  Remove from pan.

Tip in the onions (with more oil, if necessary) and caramelise to a light golden colour. Add garlic to the pan and mix.  Once the garlic releases its perfume, stir in the celery and saute until translucent.

Preheat your oven to 190C/375F.

Add the seared meat, with its juices to the vegetables. Pour in the marinade along with the diced tomatoes, Guinness, and enough beef broth to cover. Stir in the tomato paste. Add the paprika, thyme, rosemary and bay leaves. Stir well. Let the mixture come up to a boil and keep it there for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Lid the pot and pop into the oven to braise for two hours.

While the meat is simmering, melt oil and butter together; add salt and pepper. Tip in mushrooms and sauté until lovely and soft. Remove the fungi from the pan and set aside.

Just before your timer dings, knead the butter and flour together into a beurre manié.

After the dinger dings, put the pot back onto a medium-low flame on the hob. Remove about a cup's worth of liquid and mix it with the beurre manié and pour back into the stew. Stir well. Add the mushrooms and Worcestershire sauce and simmer for 20 minutes before serving.

cheers!
jasmine
I'm a quill for hire!

Happy St. Patrick's Day: Guinness-Braised Beef Ribs

Happy St. Patrick's Day to one and all. I hope you are able to spend the day with those who mean much to you.

This year's Guinness-inspired recipe was supposed to be Guinness-braised shortribs. I bought a couple of slabs of shortribs from my favourite butcher and put them in the freezer, until I had time to create this recipe. Sounds like a good idea, right? I'm thinking ahead, making sure my supper's star is ready to make his (her?) grand entrance.

One of my many great flaws is I rarely label my beef ribs. Everything else--sausages, bacon, chicken, lamb--they are all adequately labelled so I can easily pull out what I need.

Not beef ribs. In my addled brain, they are an identifiable shape in my freezer, so I think I'm pretty safe. Not this time.

This is not a beef shortrib bone. This is a beef...ummm...longrib bone.

Oh well.

I didn't realise my error until after I'd thawed the ribs. No worries. They were gorgeous and meaty and soon the original idea of braised shortribs morphed into braised beef ribs.

Knowing how well my contraption of a slow cooker works on pork ribs, I decided pull it off my shelf and put it to work on this recipe. A great move, especially as I set it to cook before I toddled off to bed the night before I wanted to serve this.

The beef was meltingly tender and the jus was nicely balanced: sweet from the tomato and the onion, but with those great deep chocolate-bitter notes from Guinness. It paired well with the cheddar'd mashed potatoes and roast asparagus, for a hearty cold-weather supper.

Guinness-Braised Beef Ribs
Serves 2-4

Ingredients

For the rub:
2Tbsp (30ml) brown sugar (dark, preferably)
1tsp (5ml) sweet paprika
1tsp (5ml) black pepper
1tsp (5ml) salt
0.5tsp (2.5ml) dry mustard
0.25tsp (1.25ml) garlic powder
0.25tsp (1.25ml) onion powder

For the braising liquid:
440ml (1.75c/1 can) Guinness
440ml (1.75c) passata/tomato puree
250ml (1c) beef broth

1.5tsp (7.5ml) Worcestershire Sauce
0.5tsp (2.5ml) dried thyme
0.5tsp (2.5ml) dried rosemary
2 dried bay leaves
0.5tsp (2.5ml) salt
0.5tsp (2.5ml) pepper

Flavourless oil, for frying
1kg (2lbs) beef ribs (meat still on the bone) or beef short ribs, cut into one-rib pieces
1 onion, sliced into thin lunettes
1-2 garlic cloves, minced


Method
Mix together the rub ingredients and pat onto meat and let sit for at least an hour, but preferably overnight in the fridge. Do not discard any leftover rub.

Mix the braising liquid's ingredients together and set aside.

Heat oil in a skillet until it shimmers. Sear the meat, in batches, on all sides. Set the browned meat on a plate and cover with tin foil. In the same skillet, cook the onions until translucent. Add the garlic and stir until it releases its fragrance.

Slow cooker method:
Prep the contraption, as per manufacturer's instructions. Tip the onion mixture into the slow cooker. Layer the seared meat over top. Stir in any remaining rub mixture into the braising liquid and pour over the meat. Set to low and cook for eight hours. The meat should be fork tender and almost fall off the bone.

Oven method:
Preheat the oven to 180C/350F.

Add the ingredients in an oven-safe lidded pot (such as a dutch oven), or in a deep baking dish as per the slow cooker instructions. Lid the pot or tightly cover the dish with tin foil. Braise, cooking in the oven for about 2.5 hours, or until the meat is fork-tender.

Serving suggestions:
If you are using beef ribs, cut the meat off the bone, and into bite-sized chunks.

Serve over plain, garlic or cheddar-mashed potatoes, buttered rice, buttered egg noodles or slices of hearty, crusty bread with plenty of the braising liquid. Accompany it with sautéed greens, asparagus or peas.

Notes:
- This dish tastes better the next day (and the next), although it is mighty fine served the day of.

-If you are serving it the next day (or later), allow the pot to cool to room temperature before popping into the fridge. Before reheating (in a lidded pot, in the oven at 350F/180C for about 30 or so minutes), remove as much of the solid that has floated to the top of the liquid.

cheers!

jasmine

I'm a quill for hire!

Mmm...Canada: Vietnamese-inspired steak salad

I know I get on a bit of a soap box when I talk about Canadian cooking. The fact is it's a cuisine so heavily influenced by all the cultures who come here, that it's hard not to like it.

Yes, I know...many people would argue that there is no Canadian cuisine, save the usual: maple syrup, beer, poutine, smoked salmon and butter tarts. But I think a lot of Canadian cuisine is about how people come here and adapt their home cooking to what's readily available...making a far-off place not so far away.

The other week I found some gorgeous Grey County, grass fed and barley finished flank steaks at my favourite butcher. I bought a piece, marinated it and grilled it. My word it was buttery-lovely.

This weekend I went back for more and came back with a bavette steak. Bavette, his assistant told me, is just behind the flank, and is much more tender, which means it needs less marinating time. When figuring out what to do with it, I thought of this year's Canadiana series and realised I could probably pull together a great example of what I think of as new Canadian cuisine.

One of my favourite Vietnamese dishes is beef salad. A southeast Asian flavoured grilled steak, thinly sliced and served with crisp, cooling veggies.

My rendition marinated, grilled and thinly sliced that lovely bavette and served over equally lovely locally-in season veggies: crisp and spicy radishes, sweet carrots, sweet-tender lettuce and sliced spring onions and finely minced garlic scapes. The recipe I provide gives you more veggies than this, but add whatever you have on hand.

Is it "authentic" as only those food snobs who've scaled unheard of mountains and waded through far off streams to get real food as only prepared by a singular cook in a singular subset of a singular culture? Far from it. But does it evoke a far off place, made not so far by what my country market has to offer.

Vietmamese-inspired flank steak
serves two

Ingredients
350g (12.5oz) flank steak or bavette steak
2Tbsp (30ml) olive oil
1.5Tbsp (22ml) runny honey
1Tbsp (15ml) nam pla (fish sauce)
1Tbsp (15ml) soy sauce
1tsp (5ml) sriracha, chilli garlic or hot sauce (to taste)
0.5tsp (2ml) garlic powder
0.5tsp (2ml) onion powder
0.25tsp (1ml) black pepper
0.5tsp (2ml) dried basil

Mix all ingredients together and marinate six to 12 hours.

Grill the steak to your pleasing. Let rest 15 minutes or so and then thinly slice


Vietnamese-inspired Dressing

juice of one lime
1.5Tbsp (22ml) runny honey
2Tbsp (30ml) fish sauce)
2Tbsp (30ml) olive oil
1tsp sriracha, chilli garlic or hot sauce, or 1 minced fresh chilli

Salad:

shredded lettuce

thinly sliced spring onions

radishes, cut into thin matchsticks

carrots cut into thin matchsticks

thinly sliced cucumber

thinly sliced mushrooms

finely minced garlic or scapes (or chives)

Thinly sliced red or yellow bell peppers

cheers!

jasmine

I'm a quill for hire!

Happy Victoria Day! Bleu cheese stuffed burgers

It's the end of the world, as we know it...and I feel fine.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who had REM's music trilling through their brain yesterday morning as we (*gasp*) awoke and found life to be business as usual.

For those of you who don't know, or have forgotten, an end-of-the-world obsessed Harold Camping (an American radio evangelist) rejigged his calculations (notice the "re") and pronounced 21 May 2011 as the beginning of the end. Along with this was something like 200 million "true believers" were to be welcomed to the afterlife, and a tsunami-inducing earthquake was supposed to hit somewhere in the Pacific.

I'm not going to mention the dearth of reports mentioning people beamed up for their one-on-one with whomever they believe to be their maker. I've not read any evidence supporting a one-day more than 10-fold increase in average daily deaths on the 21st. I won't even hint that the earthquake's target area is known for regular seismic activity and the two *small* earthquakes that did happen didn't trigger tsunami warnings.

Really...It seemed like a pretty normal kind of day.

So while the nonagenarian preacher (with what I think of as an unhealthy obsession with the obliteration of the Earth) is "flabbergasted" that the end of days didn't come (or maybe he's just bewildered, that if it stealthily occurred, why the rapture didn't save him or apparently anyone he knew) the rest of the world ticks on...

And for those of us in Canada, it means getting on with our Victoria Day long weekend.

Victoria Day is Canada's unofficial start of summer. Those with cottages travel out to open them up for the season, gardens are turned, annuals are planted, and barbecues are fired up.

Well, just because I don't have a cottage, I've already taken care of my garden, the dahlias are in, and I don't have a barbecue doesn't mean I can't partake in the first long weekend of the season in appropriate fashion...

I suppose if I actually believed Saturday was the end of everything I may have planned a more appropriate menu...but really...if it's my last meal on Earth, I wouldn't have changed my game plan. I wouldn't have stopped eating red meat and bleu cheese and I wouldn't pour the gin down the drain.

For a last meal, why would I meander too far off my You Are What You Eat list? Why should I take on uncharacteristically trendy foodish airs or make a wholesale change in what I do in hopes that these last-minute changes in the final fleeting moments would change the inevitable?

So for this Victoria Day (or end of days day or not end of days day), my beginning of summer offering is a burger stuffed with bleu cheese and topped with red onions and fried mushrooms.

To me the key to a good homemade hamburger patty is to keep it as simple as possible.

Use ground chuck, fully speckled with flecks of white fat (regular ground beef, not lean or extra lean), salt and pepper. That's it: no eggs, no dried onion soup mix, no panade. For a bleu cheese-stuffed burger, look for a medium-firm cheese--I used Australia's King Island Dairy's Roaring Forties bleu--if you go with a softer cheese, you run the risk of it melting out of the burger while it cooks.

Top it however you wish. I chose dijon mustard, fried mushrooms and red onions. I will say if you happen to have any leftover bourgignon sauce in your freezer (as I tend to have) that works well with this burger.

Bleu cheese-stuffed burgers
Yield 4

Ingredients
500g (1lb) ground chuck, or medium ground beef
0.25tsp salt (or to taste)
0.5tsp pepper (or to taste)
4tsp medium-firm bleu cheese
four buns (hamburger, ciabbata, foccacia, etc)

Condiments and toppings (to taste)
Lettuce
Fried Mushrooms
Sliced red onions
Dijon mustard
Garlicky dill pickles

Method
Mix the salt, pepper and meat together. Divide into four equal portions.

Take each portion and form a ball, then push on one side to make a bowl- or a well-like shape. Add one teaspoon of cheese to the bottom of the well and close up the meat around the cheese. Press and form into a patty. Refrigerate until ready to cook.

Fry or grill until done. Serve on a bun and top as you please.

cheers!

jasmine

I'm a quill for hire!

Corned beef Hash

Even though I was careful to not have a whopping huge hunk of corned beef, I had more than enough for a couple of suppers and sandwiches.

The most obvious solution to my embarrassment of cured beef riches was, as you've probably guessed by this post's title, corned beef hash.

Then again, I may have embarked on a 14-day brining adventure just to make this crisped potatoey-beefy-oniony conglomeration.

Like so many foods created to use up an odd bit of this or that, this, again, is a non-recipe recipe. I don't think there's a hard and fast rule about corned beef hash: chopped up left over boiled potatoes, chopped up left over corned beef, mixed with chopped onion, garlic and spices, fried, an served warm for breakfast lunch or supper.

Browned hashed potatoes with bits of spiced cured beef, topped with a soft boiled or runny poached egg, with butter toast to sop up the golden goo...what more does one want for a lazy Sunday breakfast, or a midnight nosh when back from a night out sampling the local pub's liquid offerings? Not much, I think.

Corned Beef Hash
Serves 2-4

Ingredients
Butter and or olive oil, for frying
1 onion, finely diced
1 garlic clove, minced
250g (1.5c) boiled potatoes, finely chopped
100g (1c) corned beef, finely chopped
salt
pepper
0.5tsp mustard powder
1tsp vinegar



Method
Heat fat in a cast iron pan until quite hot. Saute onions until transluscent. Add garlic and stir until its scent is released.

Tumble in chopped potatoes and meat, a pinch of salt, two of pepper and the mustard powder. Sprinkle with vinegar and stir well and press into an even layer in the pan.

Fry until the bottom is crisp and golden. Turn, in sections, to crisp the other side. If it sticks, add more fat to the pan. Fry and turn again (or as often as needed) until the potatoes and meat are lovely and crispy.

Dollop some sour cream along the side and garnish with chopped chives or spring onions.

Serve with eggs (soft boiled, poached, fried, or whichever way you wish), baked beans, fried tomatoes and or fried mushrooms.

cheers!

jasmine

I'm a quill for hire!

Corned Beef

It all started off innocently enough.

Visions of home made corned beef and cabbage along with the inevitable sandwiches and hash danced in my head, in the same way that sugar plums make their obligatory appearances at Christmas.

Recipes abound online and it all looked simple: let a beef brisket soak up a spiced brine for a week or two, boil it up and then eat.

Easy, right?

Wrong.

Well...not really wrong. Just not as easy as I thought it would be.

When little, the only corned beef I knew was canned: salty, fatty, PeptoBismol coloured with a particular pre-digested texture similar to Spam. The cool part was you had to open the can with a key. Later I discovered corned beef sandwiches made of sliced cured beef. Wow. The difference was akin to contrasting 1970s polyester to pure silk.

A couple of years ago I bought a "make your own corned beef" brisket--a plastic-encased brisket, swimming in a slightly viscous, but spiced brine. Snip the end and boil. It was okay at best, chemical at worst.

This year I decided to corn (or cure) my own brisket for St. Patick's Day. I looked at a number of recipes and for the most part it seemed doable. I was starting early enough in the month that a corned beef supper shouldn't have been an issue.

It was all good, except for what turned out to be an elusive ingredient: saltpetre.

Unfortunately my favourite haunts' can't get it in. Many pharmacies either don't carry it or have had it on back order for months. (As an aside: I was more than concerned when I had to educate one pharmacist about it. Yes, I'm pulling my prescriptions from there).

Saltpetre has been used as a curing agent since the Middle Ages to keep a lovely slice of charcuterie from turning into a petri dish of nasty bacteria. It's also primarily responsible for corned beef's and salami's characteristic pink colour.

Saltpetre is used in compounding and has been used to alleviate various conditions.

Saltpetre is a nitrate. Nitrates are, from what I've read, safe to eat, but they become unsafe when they turn into nitrites which can spur cancer-causing chemicals in animals.

Saltpetre is also an ingredient in black powder and some fertilisers

Saltpetre is a legal substance in Canada and you do not need special permits to buy it (for curing meat--not sure about fertilisers and other uses).

My butcher and I had a chat about this. He told me it's difficult to find around here as are substitutes such as InstaCure No. 1 (aka Prague Powder No. 1), Pink (curing) Salt and other curing salts such as Tender Quick is just as scarce in these parts. Hrmm...

I was willing to make a brown corned beef, but I'm tenacious (read: stubborn). Up popped Canada411 and I reached for my phone. Several calls later I found a bottle, tucked in the back of a cupboard at an almost out of the way drug store. Even the pharmacist who sold it to me didn't realise he had a bottle as he's shooed off several people emptyhanded over the past few months.

It's pretty obvious. The kitchen deities were on my side. Appropriate offerings will be made, in thanks. Thank goodness they like chocolate.

I looked at a few recipes and came up with my own, scaled down to a 1kg (2lb) brisket (thank you, my darling butcher for cutting a reasonably-sized piece for me)--unlike other recipes I've seen, I wanted something that would feed four people...not 10.

It mostly went to plan. A couple of minor SNAFUs occured: the container it was in didn't let me weigh the meat down, so I turned the brisket over daily to ensure both sides were brined. I was a little worried when I took it out of its poaching liquid--the outside browned a bit, but as I sliced it, its pink interior made me smile. And...of course... I carved with the grain, as opposed to against it.

Again, the kitchen deities smiled upon me. The brisket was tender and the spice combination was absoultely delicious. I'm quite happy with this attempt and I'll do it again--I'll get a bigger container and play with the spicing a bit. I may even see how long it's safe to brine the meat without using saltpetre (apart from freezing the meat in the brine)--there's nothing wrong with brown corned beef. Until then, here's the recipe I used.


Corned beef
Serves 4-6
Adapted from recipes by Lobel, Alton Brown and about.com
Brining time: 2 weeks
Cooking time approximtely 3hrs

Ingredients
For the brine:
0.5tsp whole black peppercorn
0.5tsp mustard seed (black or yellow--I used black)
0.5tsp whole coriander seed
6 juniper berries
4 allspice berries
4 whole cloves
2 whole cardamom pods
2.5cm (1") cinnamon stick
120g (0.5c) kosher salt
65g (0.33c) brown sugar
1 bay leaf
0.5tsp chilli flakes
0.5tsp ground ginger
0.25tsp ground nutmeg
17g (1Tbsp) saltpetre
1.25L (5c) water
1kg (2lbs) beef brisket

To cook the brisket:
water
1 onion, quartered
1 carrot chopped into large chunks
1 celery rib, chopped into large chunks
2 garlic cloves, smashed

Method
To brine the beef:
Dry toast the peppercorns, mustard seed and coriander seed in a hot skillet until the mustard seeds begin to splutter and pop. Tip onto a cutting board and juniper, allspice, cloves and cinnamon and lightly crush with a rolling pin or pot bottom (or simply lightly crush the lot with a mortar and pestle).

Combine crushed spices with salt, sugar, bay leaf, chilli flakes, ginger, nutmeg, saltpetre and water. Bring to a boil and then turn down the heat to a simmer, stirring occasionally until the salt and sugar fully dissolve. Remove from heat cool and room temp. Pop into the fridge to cool thoroughly.

Pour into a container or a zippy bag that's big enough to hold all the brine and the brisket. Submerge the brisket in the brine. If the brisket floats, weigh it down with a saucer or quarterplate so the meat is completed submerged.

Refridgerate for 14 days, checking daily to ensure the meat is totally submerged.

To cook the brisket:
Remove the meat from the brine (keep the brine!) and rinse it thoroughly in several water changes.

Strain the brine, saving the pods, seeds and spices.

Place the brisket in a pot that's just large enough to fit it. Add the brine's spices, chopped carrots, celery, onion and garlic. Cover with about 5cm (2") water. Give it a stir. Bring the water to a boil and then turn the hob down and let the pot simmer for 2.5-3 hours.

To check for doneness, insert a sharp, thin-bladed knife or a carving knife into the thickest part of the meat. If it inserts easily, then the brisket is done.

Carefully remove the meat and let sit for about 15 minutes before carving. Serve thin slices, cutting across the grain.

cheers!

jasmine

I'm a quill for hire!

Happy Birthday Edna: Cabbage Rolls

Regular readers know I take January 15 aside to remember my friend Edna Staebler, a remarkable person in my life. She was kind and sweet with an effervecent charm. Although best known in foodish circles as a cookbook writer, she also wrote about the lives of regular Canadians.

When I trawled through her recipes in search of this year's Day That Really Schmecks tribute I stumbled upon Pam Noonan's Cabbage Rolls in More Food That Really Schmecks.

Cabbage rolls are ubiquitous here in Waterloo Region. Meat and rice-filled parcelled up in cabbage leaves, served usually with a sweetish tomato sauce or a more savoury brown sauce is common place here, thanks to our German and Mennonite roots. Local diners and country restaurants feature them and the festhallen prepare thousands of them during Oktoberfest.


What struck me about the recipe was its provenance. According to its précis the recipe was born of Pam's fatigue of rice-heavy, moisture-light cabbage rolls. When creating her own, she drew upon her Trinidadian roots, adding a touch of heat and earthiness to the mix.

'How Canadian,' I thought.

This is a land of immigrants. They bring flavours, techniques and ideas with them and adapt what they know to what they have on hand. Others taste and experience and adapt further to better suit their palates and ideas.

That is what happened to the humble cabbage roll.

In its original form, the recipe is prepared via 10 hours in the slow cooker. I procrastinate and am impatient. Since ten hours is more than eight hours too long, one of the changes I made was to snug everything into my 6.5L Dutch oven and pop it into a medium oven for an hour and a half, letting the the pot blurble, uncovered for the last 30 minutes so the sauce can caramelise.

As I've never made cabbage rolls before I stuck pretty close to the original recipe, changing a couple of things here and there to reflect what I had on hand and to better suit my palate. The next time I make them--and I will as I've a few ideas I want to play with--I will make more changes, perhaps reflecting some of my own culinary influences and ideas. Nevertheless, the cabbage rolls were tasty--the meat filling was firm and the sauce was a nice blend of savoury and sweet.

Served with mashed sweet potato and a vinegary cucumber and red onion salad (as suggested in one of my queries), it was a meal Edna would have been happy to eat.

If you are interested in Edna's books, please visit my Amazon estore.


Cabbage Rolls
adapted from Edna Staebler's Pam Noonan's Cabbage Rolls from More Food That Really Schmecks

Yield: 30 cabbage rolls.

Ingredients:
For the sauce
1 796ml (28oz) can diced tomatoes
125ml (0.5c) tomato ketchup
60ml (0.25c) vinegar
60ml (0.25c) prepared mustard
60ml (0.25c) barbecue sauce
100g (0.5c) brown sugar
1dspn (2tsp) tabasco sauce
0.5tsp garlic powder
1tsp onion powder
0.5tsp black pepper

For the meat filling
1tsp black pepper
0.5tsp salt
0.25tsp ground cumin
0.5tsp dried tarragon
a spoon or two of favourless oil, for frying
1 onion, cut in a small dice
2 celery ribs, cut in a small dice
2 garlic cloves, minced
1.5kg (3lbs) lean ground beef
0.5c rice, parboiled
2 eggs, beaten
1tsp tabasco sauce
1.5Tbsp soy sauce

30 Savoy or green cabbage leaves (two heads, depending upon the cabbage's size)

Method:
For the sauce:
Bring all the sauce ingredients to a boil, then turn the hob down and simmer for about 20 minutes. Taste and balance flavours to taste. Turn off heat and let cool. Purée mixuture until smooth. Set aside.

For the cabbage leaves:
Set a pot of water to boil. Remove thickest part of the main stem with a few quick slices with a sharp knife. Fill a mixing bowl with iced water, to about the half-fill mark. Blanch the leaves, in batches, by boiling them for a minut or two, or until the leaves wilt, then plunge the leaves into the ice water to stop cooking. When all the leaves are done.
drain in a collander and set aside.

For the meat filling:
Mix the salt, pepper, cumin and taragon. Divid mixture in half and set aside.

Add celery, onions and oil to a cold pan and turn the heat to medium. Sauté, occasionally stirring until the onions are transluscent. Add the garlic and half the spice mix and stir until the garlic releases its scent. Remove from heat and let cool for a few minutes.

In a bowl, add the cooled onion mixture to the meat, as well as the rice, eggs, tobasco sauce, soy sauce, remaining spices and half a cup of the tomato sauce. Mix well.

To check seasoning, heat the pan and add about a half teaspoon of the meat mixture to the pan and fry until cooked. Taste with a bit of sauce and balance flavours to taste.

To Asssemble:

Preheat oven to 350F/180C.

Bundle two tablespoons' worth of filling into each leaf.

Spread a couple of spoons' worth of sauce onto the bottom of a 6-7L Dutch oven. Snug one layer of cabbage rolls into the pot. Sparingly spoon sauce over the cabbage rolls, then fit the next layer of rolls on top and spoon sauce again. Continue until all the cabbage rolls are in the pot and pour the rest of the sauce over the top.

Lid the pot and place in the preheated oven for an hour. Remove the lid and return to the oven and bake for another 30 minutes (90 minutes cooking time in total).


cheers!
jasmine
I'm a quill for hire!

I is a grown up: removing marrow from beef bones

I first felt adult when I set up my first Registered Retirement Savings Plan. I guess that says a lot about me. It wasn’t when I passed my driver’s test. It wasn’t when I cast my first vote. It wasn’t when I could legally drink.

In my mid-20s and in my first real job I knew I didn’t want to be one of those grannies who subsist on tea and toast, with only the government pension scheme keeping me off the streets. Setting up an RRSP seemed like right thing to do to better fund a retirement which was decades away. Retirement is still decades away and despite my best efforts, other moments keep my maturity needle keeps edging towards adulthood.

Grown-up moments in my kitchen have been known to happen.
In as practical a matter as cooking is, I simply love to clatter pots and pans and will roll up my sleeves and do what’s necessary. No fanfare. No melodramatic noises. I know not everyone is comfortable with dismembering a bird or resurrect the Spanish Inquisition when heating up a vat of oil for deep fat frying, but these bits of business are regular occurrences in my kitchen.

That’s not to say I don’t celebrate scaling my own Everests. Whether it was my first caramel that didn’t turn into a crystallised charred glob or creating a pastry that doesn’t make one wax lyrically about boot leather, these accomplishments are quietly celebrated and reinforced whatever culinary acumen possess.
Earth-shattering? No. Nobel or James Beard Prize-winning? Not in the slightest. Moments that forward my kitchen’s progress? Yes.

My most recent maturing moment came when I had to extract marrow from beef bones.

The oleophobic and hemophobic, squeamish about biological bits of kitchen work may simply want to turn away now.

I’ve often seen marrow bones in the bigscarymegamart’s butcher’s case. Honestly, apart from a slurp of broth, or sopping up drippings from a roast, I’ve not really considered them for much. A chosen recipe from the next cookery review demanded I use beef marrow…and for that I needed to, well, extract beef marrow from beef bones

To remove marrow from beef bones, a bit of exsanguination must take place. Scooping it from an unsoaked bone will result in globules of cooked blood in your finished dish. You may or may not care, but for my usage, I had no inclination to dig into a dish, splattered with greyed brown.


Down to businessTo remove the blood from the bones, cover the bones in saline ice water solution (two tablespoons of salt mixed into the water) and refrigerate for 12-24 hours. 
Completely change the water every three or four hours, replacing the pinkish solution with increasingly salty water, adding more two tablespoons of salt to each saline solution (the first change will have four tablespoons of salt, the third, six tablespoons, etc).
At the end of the process, remove the soaked bones to a pan of simmering, salted water. Simmer them, uncovered for about 5-10 minutes, or until the marrow just loosens from the bone. 
Removed to a paper towel-lined plate and let sit until cool enough to handle.
With the aid of a paring knife, loosen the marrow from the bones and push the fatty pieces into a bowl of icy water. 

You can refrigerate the marrow until you need to use it.

And that’s all that was needed for this rite of passage.

cheers!
jasmine
I'm a quill for hire!

Milk Calendar Mondays: Kids Crazy Meatball Wraps

Yes, I'm cutting it close. No I didn't forget or bail out of this month's recipe. Just poor time management.

I thought, for a change of pace, it would be good to have someone (who's not me) who ate the meal actually report on it...just in case anyone's thinking I've lost my objectivity with this project.

So...here's the exbf with his take on this month's recipe. My comments are bracketed and in pinky-mauve.

Jasmine has been working her way through the recipes on the Milk Calendar and I have the distinct honour (or shall I say I seem to be paying a penance for things I’ve done and have yet to do) by playing the occasional role of guinea-pig.

I have to admit that while I like her cooking, I dread meals taken from Milk Calendar recipes. The mere mention of those words strike terror in my stomach because that it’s apparent the Milk Calendar’s approach seems to be to take some innocent recipe whose original form involves no milk and inflict dairy upon it. They seem to have little regard for how this affects the taste or texture. The end results are usually nearly tasteless and only barely digestible.

Since Jasmine’s cooking is usually a lot better than that, I have to assume the problem is the recipes and not the cook.

I would expect that this does not need to be said but if you are at all lactose intolerant, avoid the Milk Calendar recipes. After many I’ve tried, I can say the same caveat goes if you have functional taste buds combined with any level of desire to use them while eating.

This month’s offering was Kids’ Crazy Meatball Wraps which was meat-balls in a ketchup and I assume milk-based sauce that had corn in it in a wrap (Jasmine: yes, I chose the ketchup version...after so many disappointing meals I wasn't going to use my homemade tomato sauce, the good bottled tomato sauce or my homemade ketchup) :

“A fun dinner will get the kids excited and parents will be thrilled to make an easy, nutritious meal that everyone will love. Serve crisp veggie sticks on the side.”

The title of the recipe is like “employee empowerment”: if they have to tell you that they’re empowering their employees, they aren’t. In the same way, if they tell you it’s “crazy” and a “meal that everyone will love” it isn’t insane (Jasmine: Well, I question the thought processes behind mixing milk with ketchup and corn and carrots--exactly how much sugar should one have in a meal?) and you’ll probably be hard pressed to find a group of people who value good flavoured food to love it…choke it down, maybe.

I swear they’ve got a time warp back there to the 1950s or 1960s. It struck me as something a cautiously adventurous cook circa 1963 [1] who had heard of a burrito, but who had never actually seen one and who was a bit worried their families might reject anything truly exotic, might have come up with. The best one can say for it was that it was inoffensively bland and easy to chew. My favourite part of the meal was the pickles she served with them.

I would recommend this recipe for people easy intimidated by flavour. It might also be suitable for people in a persistent vegetative state, assuming they can handle semi-solid food.


1: Young readers should be grateful that they missed the era in which cutting-edge home-cooked cuisine in Ontario involved such knee-trembling excitement as Jell-O With Things That Are Almost Certainly Food (or at least Food-like) In and Pork Chops Baked to the Consistency of Tent Pegs. The reason Canadians have in recent years tended to be a little chubbier than previous generations is because until the 1970s, a surprising percentage of our food was only barely edible (Jasmine: Hmmm…you seem to forget the processed foods, fast foods and all those other things that the Milk Calendar people apparently want their readers to not rely so heavily upon, but I'd usually gladly take over certain Milk Calendar recipes I've made).


cheers!
jasmine

Appealing to my primal nature

There are fewer sounds more appealing than the sizzle of a steak as it touches searing metal.

My thoroughly carnivorous being immediately relaxes at that sound. My eyes brighten, I breathe deeply and I begin my euphoric ascent.

A really good meaty fat-ringed offering, unfetteredly prepared and accompanied by simple platemates, is the cure to many over-committed hours, long days, longer nights and pretty much anything else that dares to trod upon my time or psyche.

My past few weeks have been busy doing this and that and that and this. Sitting down and "just being" hasn't happened much...neither visiting (and commenting) on my favourite blogs or replying to most of my email (and yes, Linda, I saw your comment and I'll be visiting you soon!).

When life gets like this, I want easy, tasty and fast food--not necessarily fast food (even though my gullet has been reintroduced to it over the past couple of weeks). So today when I ran into the mediumscarygrocer's to pick up a few things, I perused the quick sale butcher's counter and found a tray of beautiful grilling steaks at half price, I knew what I'd have for dinner tonight: pepper steak.

This is a non-recipe recipe. Steaks dredged in a mixture of crushed black and Sichuan peppercorn and powdered mustard, garlic and onion with a bit of salt seared on my table-top grill. Very satisfying and very yummy.


cheers!
jasmine

Milk Calendar Mondays: Roast Beef Dinner Salad

Found tucked amidst sales flyers and the colour comics, November's new Milk Calendar's arrival is a an anticipated bit of Canadiana, linking together potentially millions of families across the country. Think I'm kidding? More than 2 million were distributed in Saturday newspapers.

I remember being little, leafing through its pages from --the full-colour pictures represented "Canadian" food for me--not what I got a lot of as a youngster. My Dear Little Mummy (okay, she was My Dear Big Mummy then) rarely cooked from it. Apart from the occasional muffin or cake, the recipes went largely untried in our household.

So there it dangled on a bare nail, part art, part time keeper and reminder of bills to be paid and those already paid. Each month had a different meal or treat--everything from milkshakes and smoothies to pastas and, of course cakes and other sweets. Each beautifully photographed to entice the home cook to cook with milk and its kindred foods. At the end of the year, the calendar came down and was stored in the basement, with the other calendars.

Ashamedly, I continued Mummy's tradition of not cooking from it. Yes, I looked forward to receiving the calendar, flipping through the pages and salivating at some of the photos and recipes, but it never really crossed my mind to try the recipes. Inexplicable, really, given I'm pretty much willing to try any kitchen treat at least once.

When this year's calendar arrived, I decided to change that. Not because this year's recipes seem better than last (they don't), or because I've recently developed a hankering for dairy (that's been an ongoing craving ever since I was little, much to Mum's chagrin). I don't know what it was, but I decided this year the calendar to use as more than a record keeper of my household goings ons. So once a month...probably on a Monday, I'll post that month's recipe.

January's recipe for Roast Beef Dinner Salad is quick, satisfying, and different from the usual leftover meal. It's ludicrously simple: lettuce leaves strewn with waves of roast beef, crumbles of tangy old cheddar, juicy little tomatoes, crunchy croutons and fingers of cooked green beans, dressed in a creamy horseradish and thyme vinaigrette.

I'll probably come back to this, but change it up a bit--add sauteed mushrooms and onions and switch the horseradish and cheddar for blue cheese.

Simple, delicious and easily adaptable, this is definitely worth a try.

cheers!
jasmine

"2008 Milk Calendar"