Just made hamburg "brioche" buns according to a NYTimes recipe, for the wife and me the recipe is 2x too much. 15 mins in 400F "steamed" oven, rotate once . Very nice.
There is a cheap (but 5star rating) dumpling place in Montreal on Ste. Catherine between Atwater and Guy, called Sammi & Soupe Dumpling. It's near Concordia University, so lots of cheap eateries in the area, and when my daughter was attending Concordia she took my wife and I there. They are known for their soup dumplings, which are great, but they also do lamb and coriander dumplings (steamed or fried) which are to die for. Also I think the first time I had lamb in an East Asian restaurant, I was surprised but delighted. Of course they did greAt things with pork, too. We ate a ridiculous amount of dumplings!
(I can't find a proper web site for Sammi but google maps will show you photos of their menu.)
Thanks hitsware, all my searches were taking me to online ordering outfits. Great dumplings.
They look good ....
I don't do Oriental anymore because
of MSG issues , but remember it well : )
I don't do Oriental anymore because
of MSG issues , but remember it well : )
Well, I just set up two batches of "My Bread" to do their thing for 18-19 hours. Will bake them first thing tomorrow morning.
Tonight I am making a not-so-traditional French-Canadian tourtiere. Normally it is primarily pork, beef and mashed potatoes. My recipe uses all wild venison, with some bear fat (there has to be some fat!), and I also put very thinly sliced mushrooms in mine. The mashed potatoes are a given.
Tomorrow it'll be turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, green been casserole, squash, cole slaw, jellied salad, cranberry sauce and plenty of Pfalz Reisling. Then sticky Christmas pudding and 8 or 9 types of squares/treats, including stollen (my favourite).
Then I'll fast for 2 days. 🙂
Tonight I am making a not-so-traditional French-Canadian tourtiere. Normally it is primarily pork, beef and mashed potatoes. My recipe uses all wild venison, with some bear fat (there has to be some fat!), and I also put very thinly sliced mushrooms in mine. The mashed potatoes are a given.
Tomorrow it'll be turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, green been casserole, squash, cole slaw, jellied salad, cranberry sauce and plenty of Pfalz Reisling. Then sticky Christmas pudding and 8 or 9 types of squares/treats, including stollen (my favourite).
Then I'll fast for 2 days. 🙂
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I just found a package of grouse in the freezer (1 each - blue grouse, ruffed grouse and spruce grouse), so Christmas morning breakfast will be Grouse & Eggs Benedict! Always a hit at our table!
Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it!
Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it!
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Christmas eve dinner, cole slaw, cauliflower and mushrooms, and a nice mid-rare 100% grass fed beef burger sourced from a local farm.
Went to friends' house for sherry (I splurged on Del Duque amontillado) with cheese, crackers, raw veggies and dip, smoked salmon, tapenade etc, and our hostess had made nice cross-cultural snacks, tourtiere empanadas (pork tourtiere filling in pastry pockets).
The turkey supply was a bit spotty around here this year, and the grocery store where I generally shop had turkeys but no small ones. Since there will only be 4 of us for dinner I would have been happy with a 10lb bird, and I usually get one that is somewhere between 10 and 12 pounds. This year I had to get one about 15 pounds. After I brined it and rinsed it, I was preparing to spatchcock it, but as I looked at the bird and at the broiler pan I generally use to cook spatchcocked turkey, I realized there was going to be a lot of overhang! I felt like Roy Scheider in "Jaws" ("We need a bigger boat!"). Quick change of plans as the stuffed bird went into the oven with backbone intact. High winds today make power outages possible so even the rotisserie is out of the question. If the worst happens I can spark up the charcoal grille, but that will also present some challenges. We like challenges, right?
Pear tarte tatin for dessert tonight, the cold snap pears are halved, peeled, and cored, and ready to go. I got some chestnuts to go with the Brussels sprouts but forgot to roast them, but I can use a mesh pan on the BBQ I think. I have a couple of hours to kill. (Sipping Tomatin 12 year old xmas whiskey but likely better stop that for a while.)
Pear tarte tatin for dessert tonight, the cold snap pears are halved, peeled, and cored, and ready to go. I got some chestnuts to go with the Brussels sprouts but forgot to roast them, but I can use a mesh pan on the BBQ I think. I have a couple of hours to kill. (Sipping Tomatin 12 year old xmas whiskey but likely better stop that for a while.)
Great year... I was given a pair of young geese by an aunt who raises a few each year for the family. You cannot get more organic, cleaner meat than that.
They were first simmered in stock, cut in individual portions then slowly cooked in fat and finally covered in flour/eggs/breadcrumbs and quickly roasted on a hot pan with goose fat. Served with a garlic sauce (basically a bechamelle made with the boiling stock and goose fat).
The taste is somewhere in between a duck and a guinea fowl.
They were first simmered in stock, cut in individual portions then slowly cooked in fat and finally covered in flour/eggs/breadcrumbs and quickly roasted on a hot pan with goose fat. Served with a garlic sauce (basically a bechamelle made with the boiling stock and goose fat).
The taste is somewhere in between a duck and a guinea fowl.
Geese is perhaps my favourite fowl. Too bad they price it out of the market here, you can really only buy it frozen, it’s farmed and it’s only in a few stores. Canada geese OTOH are a dime a dozen, are everywhere but you’re not allowed to just grab one, and many of us are not equipped to gut and pluck anyway.
My lovely wife just made us a snack of soft tofu, lightly seasoned and fried and an absolutely awesome fried fermented green cabbage. Couldn’t believe my tastebuds. Party in my mouth. Fantastic balance of salt and tang. Still nice and firm so the texture was as good as the taste.
What are the origins of this recipe? I would use a heavily reduced stock sweet/sour sauce with bigarade oranges or lingonberries, I don't do well with duck/goose/lamb fat.
Well, it's a variation on a regional dish called "oie à l'instar de Visé" (goose as made in Visé), Visé being a small town near Liège in Belgium.
Afaik, there are two variants of the dish. Both start by poaching the whole bird, in a vegetable stock. This must not be too long (about 1h-1h30 for a 7lbs young bird as I had) nor too hard (very gentle boil). This takes out a lot of fat from the bird (you can later skim the stock to get the fat). Then you skin it and cut into portions. You can at this point reserve it for the night.
The first variant put the portions either in a stovepot or in the oven with plenty of fat (the meat is covered) and let it gently warm. Kind of like a duck confit. This version can be found in Escoffier's book iirc. The second version puts a breading on the portions and roasts them on a hot pan.
In my view, both versions are flawed. The first can be too greasy, the second too dry. So the trick is to combine them. The breading will suck the fat out of the meat, giving you a crispy exterior and a very tender interior. If you don't overdo the cooking, the meat is even still slightly pink at the core.
edit: typically served with pink fir apple potatoes (corne de gatte around here) and oven cooked half apples topped with lingonberries.
Afaik, there are two variants of the dish. Both start by poaching the whole bird, in a vegetable stock. This must not be too long (about 1h-1h30 for a 7lbs young bird as I had) nor too hard (very gentle boil). This takes out a lot of fat from the bird (you can later skim the stock to get the fat). Then you skin it and cut into portions. You can at this point reserve it for the night.
The first variant put the portions either in a stovepot or in the oven with plenty of fat (the meat is covered) and let it gently warm. Kind of like a duck confit. This version can be found in Escoffier's book iirc. The second version puts a breading on the portions and roasts them on a hot pan.
In my view, both versions are flawed. The first can be too greasy, the second too dry. So the trick is to combine them. The breading will suck the fat out of the meat, giving you a crispy exterior and a very tender interior. If you don't overdo the cooking, the meat is even still slightly pink at the core.
edit: typically served with pink fir apple potatoes (corne de gatte around here) and oven cooked half apples topped with lingonberries.
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Time to think about dinner for New Year's Eve. We don't eat a lot of beef, so on my Costco run this AM I picked up a boneless leg of lamb roast. This afternoon I unwrapped and dried it, smeared the roast with a good tablespoon of kosher salt, fresh garlic, black pepper, EV olive oil, and fresh rosemary and vacuumed bagged it to marinate/brine for a couple of days.
Santa brought an Anova Immersion circulator this year, so my plan is to use my new toy and cook the lamb sous vide to about 130 degrees F as it is in the bag then reverse sear it when done. Any thoughts on whether to finish it in a cast iron pan or under the broiler? Sides will be roasted baby potatoes and a green salad. Maybe a chimichurri incorporating some fresh mint from the garden to go on the lamb?
Santa brought an Anova Immersion circulator this year, so my plan is to use my new toy and cook the lamb sous vide to about 130 degrees F as it is in the bag then reverse sear it when done. Any thoughts on whether to finish it in a cast iron pan or under the broiler? Sides will be roasted baby potatoes and a green salad. Maybe a chimichurri incorporating some fresh mint from the garden to go on the lamb?