Feenie in Edmonton

Rob Feenie who most notably  scored a defeat against Chef Masaharu Morimoto in ‘battle crab’ on Iron Chef America -  is undeniably an Iron Chef -  and rightly so.  Feenie recently spent three days  as “Chef in Residence” at Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT).

Check out this site where CBC posted some of his recipies like for risotto, beef carpaccio and roast chicken.

Enjoy

Bad, like a Virgin Airline meal

Some things are too good to pass up. When I came across this – just this morning – I had to share it as I am sure it will put a smile on your face.

Bad airline food is one thing- documenting it and having a 1,000 word rant on it is somethig else. This food looks bad.   Hell, I would have told them that they were serving the food  from the previous flight’s garbage bin – (but that’s just me).

Airline food is one of the things you have to deal with when travelling. When I wrote Air Fare some time ago I was being a little tongue in cheek. Sure it is better to bring your own food on board but in an ever increasingly secure world it is becoming less practical.

The guy wrote the letter, sent to Sir Richard Branson and then onto the Daily Telegraph. The mediaa will cover anything these days so, in all its glory – here it is.

Presidential Chef – Who could it be?

Presidntial chefs are not a dime a dozen and pervious chefs including Walter Scheib who left after serving 11 years as chef to both the Clinton family and the Bush family.

So who is right to take the highest ranking Chef in the country? Some would argue that a celebrity – like Rick Bayless, or Alice Walters would fit the bill – however in this article, it explains why that seems like a really bad idea.

Like any great position there are always other contenders for the mantle and here. But there always has to be a winner. It seems that Mr. Obama became smitten with Mr. Bush’s current chef Cristeta Comerford – but we won’t know until it is announced. Until then may the best Chef win.

ed Note: And this just in… Cristeta Comerford is stayong on as the Presidential Chef

Hugh Giraffe Gaffe

It seems British food personalities like getting ’stuck innit’, as they are wont to say.  Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has proclaimed publicly that he is very fond of  steaks.  This in itself is not a problem, but when it is Giraffe steak -  well, then the gloves really come off.  See, it seems that the nanny state of Britain have seen fit to criticize HF-W for saying it was good eats.  But because the Giraffe is on the protected list of animals it is very dangerous to say things like that, even if the steak in question was culled, prepared and eaten in another foreign and sovereign country where it is perfectly legal to consume such animals -  it’s not the country who has to suffer -  it is the food evangelist who gets the boots taken to him.

Sad, but there it is.

Obama Lunchen Menu revealed

As part of the inauguration ceremonies next week, the Presidential Inauguration Committee posts the courses for the first meal of the President of the United States once sworn in.

President Elect Obama’s choices for his luncheon? Not only has the Times Online have the menu, but the recipes as well.

Bon appetite.

A. A Gill is brilliant

Anyone who can write “fatty bloke’s blind starfish” when referring to dish of potted meat and especially in a national newspaper and doubly so as the food critic -  deserves some sort of award -  for bravery at the very least.

Knights of the ol’ rib shack – fight back

I’ve said in the past that there is nothing so beautiful than a verbal evisceration by food critic.  The beauty by which layers of bad service, equally poor food and rotten ambiance are sliced away with surgical precision makes me swoon.

Well, in  London, one of the eviscerated has struck back.  A rib shack in Knightsbridge of all places has tried to even -  with funny results.

Enjoy.

The Dream Maker

I suffering through what one might describe as a cold of monumental proportions. It has knocked me for six over the last couple of nights and I am in dire straits the following tok place late last night while fighting the evils of being wide awake with a head cold…enjoy.

It is late at night and I’m wide awake. Staring blankly at the ceiling waiting for sleep to come - but it is no use – I’m so awake, I’m wired for sound.

What to do to cure this dreaded insomnia? Tossing and turning does me no good. With each roll in the blankets my wife shifts a bit and wakes just a little more. Time to get up and come up with a plan to get back to sleep.

Getting something to eat would work. But I’m not hungry.

A warm glass of milk? Uh uh. Not my thing either. I want a good solid way to relax and get the sleep needed. It’s time to pull out the big guns - it’s time for the hot toddy.

The origin of the hot toddy comes from Scotland. It referred to a “mixed drink served hot”.

Of the many variants there is always an alcohol component (whiskey, brandy or rum), a hot liquid (generally tea), a sweetener (honey or sugar) and a citrus (lemon or orange).

I have been told that if consumed – um, vigorously, it is guaranteed to put you flat on your back. So off I go to score the perfect Insomniac’s TKO, and my commentary on how it all went down.

Hot Toddy

1 teabag of black tea ( I chose decaffeinated to help me sleep)

2 oz whiskey - use what you have. I had a single malt on hand but a blend is just as good.

1 1 /2 tsp brown sugar

1 round slice of lemon.

Boil the kettle. Fill the cup3 /4 of the way over the tea, lemon and sugar and steep for a couple of minutes.

Remove the teabag and add the whiskey.

This is how it worked:

The first sip - ow! Super hot. I think I burned myself. Nope. The lemon and the whiskey are working in harmony. I can feel the relaxing properties of the whiskey. Bless the Scots for this invention!

Second sip –. It slithers down my throat and it is very warming. I can feel it as it makes its way down into my stomach. It is a funny sensation.

Third sip - no pain here. Shoulders are relaxing and I am getting a little sleepy. This is working.

Fourth Sip - not much left. Lots of sugar. Should have stirred it a bit more. The sugar is not helping things here at all.

The warmth is like a blanket. Everything is a little fuzzy but not dangerously so. I think this is going to work. When it was all over I slept – like a log.

The verdict is that for me, a hot toddy works - really well. A bit of a warning though. It dries you out the next day and it has the potential to become a hangover of immense proportions. My advice is to have a lot of water on standby when you wake up after your toddy induced sleep. It is not something to use every night to put you to sleep – but in a pinch, a hot toddy will work wonders. When you can’t sleep the hot toddy can become the stuff of which dreams are made.

When good wines turn bad

I love summer. It is the time when we all get outside and enjoy the short warm season we euphemistically call Summer.

We’ve had a lot of rain and really, pretty horrible weather as of late. However, those sunny days produce warmth that is unequalled. With very low humidity due to our omnipresent breezes, we enjoy all the heat of summer, without the need for in-house AC.

While we might love the sun, there can be casualties.

I experienced one of them this week and it made me sad.

Wine is a living thing. It is made through a process of growing the fruit, harvesting the fruit and then fermenting the fruit to produce alcohol.

I am often asked the question – how do you know when a bottle of wine is bad? Until now, I only really knew the general idea behind a “corked” bottle of wine. In order to fully understand this problem you have to understand the wine making process as a whole. It is an interesting process, and one which I didn’t really give much thought to until I opened a bottle of wine this week.

As I said, wine is a living thing. When on the vine the grapes grow like any other fruit, basking in the sun, and defining the sugar content of the fruit with each passing day. When harvested, the grapes, still warm from the radiant heat of the sun, are picked in clusters ready for crushing.

Crushing, as in days gone by was done manually, with feet. Modern techniques employ large crushing machines which mechanically crush and de-stem the grapes saving countless man hours of work.

When this is over the fermentation begins with yeasts and sugar as the 2000 year old alchemy of wine making begins in earnest, converting simple sugars into complex alcohols. This step can take up to 30 days to complete. Sweeter wines are stopped early, leaving residual sugars to carry sweetness. Dry wines require all the sugar is consumed during fermentation.

Then comes the filtering, where sediment and residual yeasts are removed from the process and the final product is ready to be bottled.

Then bottling and cellaring begin the final journey from plant to palate.

It is at this stage when things can potentially go wrong.

Real corks in bottles were once part of living trees and sometimes can be exposed to micro organisms which attack and eat the cork. A wine is said to be “corked” when a wine comes in contact with a contaminated cork.

These little organisms can turn a wine into something unmistakably bad – depending on how it is made it could smell like wet cardboard or even the pong of old, smelly socks. Reds lose their deep colour and begin turning brown around the edges, and whites tend to lean towards a tan colour.

But wines can suffer fates far worse than being corked. This past weekend I had my eye on a Canadian Wine – a Baco Noir from an Ontario winery. My wife picked it up some days ago and it sat, comfortably on our kitchen table. While not sitting in direct sunlight it did catch some daily rays and it probably suffered for being mistreated and not kept in a humidity controlled environment.

However, I didn’t think anything of it – I was completely oblivious until I cracked it open on Saturday night ready to pair it with a char-grilled steak. The kitchen smelled like a bakery – fresh yeast to be exact. It took only one sip to confirm the truth – the wine had gone through a re-fermentation. A small amount of the yeast from the fermentation process stayed the bottle and the warmth of the sun woke up the dormant cells creating the unmistakable smell of yeast.

I knew I had made a blunder once the cork was out – I hadn’t taken the time to look after the wine – get it in storage and get it out of the heat. So that you don’t face the same fate, here are some other things to consider:

Storage of wine is crucial. Keep the bottle horizontal, out of direct sunlight and in a cool place.

Wines breathe naturally – their shelf life once open, even if in a refrigerator, is only a couple of days. After that, the aromas and distinctly unique characteristics of the wine will fade to blandness.

Following these easy steps sometimes seems like extra effort, but it can prevent good wines from going bad.

Originally written in July 2007

Of Family and Christmas Yet to Come

Christmas is the time when family and friends gather ’round the table to celebrate family – and the true meaning of the holidays. For me, I am a traditionalist – I love the time when we see extended family for the first time since last Christmas. I have these dreams of the Norman Rockwell traditional holiday. People darting in from across the country – converging on my folks home and all taking the time to celebrate the holidays together – as a family.

My mom has always wanted that large familial gathering – with her home being the hub and hive of activity. We’re getting there.
My sister and her family come home every other year and they come home real soon. The boys are 3 and 5 – and they are a lot of fun when they come to visit. To me, the cacophony of children running around on a sugar bender married with the clinking of glasses and good cheer is what makes Christmastime unlike any other holiday in the year. It is the sounds of children being children – and adults acting like children.

My mom is getting ready like the quartermaster of the army – checking and rechecking…and checking again for good measure to make sure nothing is left to chance and no one is without anything over the holidays.

With my wife by my side we’re set – well, almost.

The tree, culled from my annual Christmas tree hunt with the boys is up, but not decorated. Christmas shopping is wrapping up – so far, the internet gets most of my thanks. The food is coming in bit by bit – entertaining is a costly thing so we have to take our time with it. So, we can say, like most of our friends “we’re pretty much done” – and the waiting begins for the big day.

I am now sad.

I have very little to do before Christmas day. Not much last minute shopping – no sneaking of presents into the house at the last minute. No eleventh hour sweating that I haven’t found the perfect present.

My wife is the baker – so Saturday she is going to be making Thumbprint Cookies, a staple of the house since we got married. One Candy Cane Cake – as a special request from her mom this year.

Somehow I feel left out. I’m not cooking. I’m not baking. I seem to be in charge of the bar stock – rum, gin, vermouth, vodka, beer of all sorts, scotch, wines (red white and sparkling), sherry ( for my mom), port. Apple liquor for apple martinis, fruits for fruit smoothies ( The hit of last Christmas at our home). Eggnog for aforementioned rum. We’re so set, all I can do is think about what nibbles to have. Try this one: Smoked Salmon mousse in tortilla cups.

Flour tortillas
Mini muffin tins.
1/4 cup melted butter
1 pkg cream cheese
1/2 side smoked salmon
1 lemon.
1 bunch of dill.

Using a cookie cutter cut out rounds to line the mini muffin tins. I like using a 2.5 inch cutter as it leaves enough of the sides to slightly flute in the cups.
Brush each cup with some melted butter. Bake in a 350 degree oven until golden around the edges.

Take out of the pans and let cool. Bake off as many as you need. I use 24-30 for this recipe.
Put cream cheese, and salmon in a food processor.
Add zest of lemon and 1/2 the juice.
Process until almost smooth.
Transfer mixture into a 1L plastic zip-lock bag. Cut 1/8 in off the tip.
Pipe mixture into the tortilla cups.
Garnish with a dill frond. Continue with the rest of the cups.
Serve with a crisp Chardonnay or Sauvignon blanc.

The thing about family is that whatever you decide to make as a tasty treat is always appreciated. Be sure to not stress yourself out too much. Find things that are pre-made to help lighten the work load – I will be.

There is no harm in giving in and letting someone else do some of the heavy lifting of food preparation, after all, like the gifts under the tree – it is the thought that counts.

Have fun. Live well and enjoy the holidays.

Copyright 2008 Unlawful disseminaton of this or any other writing with out expressed written consent will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.