Bec's Happybox

WBW 25: Champagne

This month's Wine Blogging Wednesday is being hosted by Sam of Becks and Posh, a San Francisco area food blog that I plan to spend a lot of time reading in the next couple of weeks before we leave for our USA roadtrip.  Sam chose Champagne as the theme and I thought this was a great choice.  There was one little problem, though.  When I sent Tobias down to our wine shop to pick up a bottle to accompany our brunch this past Sunday, he came back with a California sparkling wine, rather than real Champagne.  Apparently the cheapest bottle of real French Champagne at the store was 55 dollars.  Yikes!  I thought "Ohp, Sam is not going to go for this.  She specifically stipulated real Champagne!"  But I asked nicely and Sam has agreed to let me be an official WBW 25 participant, despite my shameless flouting of the rules. 

So the bottle we ended up with was a Roederer Estate Brut from the Anderson Valley of California, which isn't a Champagne, of course, but it's pretty darn close.  The Roederer winery was founded by the president of Champagne Roederer, the winery that makes Cristal (accusations of racism aside, I would love to try Cristal one day).  The California branch of Roederer opened in the 80s and they've been making their Anderson Valley Brut since 1988. 

There is a lot about how this wine is made on the Roederer website, but here are the salient points:

• made from pinot noir and chardonnay grapes
• made from grapes of multiple vintages
• aged in French oak
• a team from the Roederer winery in France comes over to help blend it.  Fancy!

We tried the wine as part of a brunch and we invited Abu, my friend Ms. T, and her daughter to join us and give their perceptions of the wine as well.  Everyone seemed to enjoy the wine, but I think Tobias and I were the most excited about it, being the most geeky. 

This wine was full of surprises for me.  The first surprise was how far the cork flew when Tobias opened the bottle.  If only we'd been outside, I'm sure it would have gone into orbit.  As it was, it hit the ceiling hard, flew across the room, and landed on the front porch of Sahsez' Playmobil Victorian mansion.  The second surprise was the amount of bubbles.  There were thousands of them!  It was so much more bubbly than any other sparkling wine I've tried.  I'm not sure if cork flying distance and number of bubbles are generally considered the marks of a good sparkling wine, but in this case, it seemed to be so.

More surprises: the gorgeous, delicate palate of this wine.  Very minerally, not fruity, but so easy to drink and with a nice smooth mouthfeel.  There was pineapple and citrus and melon on the nose, once the bubbles calmed down enough for people to stick their noses in there. 

People seem to enjoy drinking sparkling wines more often alone than with food.  I think I might enjoy this, especially the classic, romantic Champagne-for-two-in-a-fancy-hotel-room thing.  But for my first foray into the world of really good sparkling wines, I wanted to try it with brunch.  So, to start, we had a salad with a raspberry balsamic vinaigrette, strawberries, chevre and toasted almonds.  With the strawberries, it was an obvious pairing choice, and I think it went beautifully.  For a second course we had quiche lorraine, which was still good, but was slightly overpowering for the wine, because of the pancetta I put in it. 

In future, I would definitely buy this wine again, and would probably pair it with the salad again as well.  I'm also itching to try a real Champagne, and maybe pair it with a nice seafoody pasta.  But mostly, I'm looking forward to February, when my wedding anniversary rolls around, and I have a good excuse to get a really nice bottle of Champagne, and have it with nothing but strawberries and a fine man. 

Kitchen inspiration, lack thereof

Last night I made steak bearnaise for dinner because a) I found a great steak at the grocery store which was marked both ORGANIC (green label) and REDUCED (red label) and b) the tarragon that Tobias is growing in his herb garden is crying out to be used, and what better way to use it than in a fatty, fatty sauce which one pours over a nice grilled hunk of red meat? 

Now I used to make steak bearnaise once every couple of months or so, and I didn't think it was a huge hassle.  But last night it took me forever.  Even just remembering where I keep the chervil and the tarragon vinegar was a chore.  I felt like a stranger in my own kitchen.  Which really hammers home the fact that I have not been doing much innovative cooking lately.  Cooking,  yes, because I have to feed all these people every day, but innovative cooking, no.  Nothing different or new.  I've resorted to burgers about once a week over the summer, and I don't mean interesting burgers either, just cheese, ketchup,  and mustard. 

The 100 new recipes category on this blog is feeling very neglected. 

Part of the reason I haven't felt like putting much thought into meals is because taking care of M'hijo can be all-encompassing.  I mentioned recently that he likes to go outside around the dinner-prep hour, which means that once I do get back in the kitchen, I'm in a rush to get something on the table.  The freedom to cook for an extended period and alone is a luxury I don't get much of these days.  Last night while I whisked the (half-pound!!) of butter into the bearnaise, Tobias held a tired and cranky M'hijo and eventually let him have a little cry in his crib.  It made the sauce seem not worth it.  (Luckily, this passed, and once we ate it, it was very, very worth it.)

The other thing that's hindered my enthusiasm is the season.  It sounds blasphemous to say it, but I'm really over summer food right now.  It's still hot out, but I don't want to eat barbecue, fresh, cheery salads, berry desserts, or anything cold, especially cold soups.  Insalata caprese I don't mind, and good thing, because Tobias' cherry tomatoes are still coming on strong and I have to eat my fair share (about a gazillion pounds). 

But other than tomatoes, summer food doesn't appeal.  What I do feel like is some chicken curry, pork stew, risotto, red cabbage.  Fall food = comfort food. 

So, I expect to stay in culinary limbo land for a few weeks while the weather is too warm to really justify cassoulet, but I just can't bring myself to eat anymore potato salad.  After that, we'll be on vacation anyway, and I'll be learning a whole new kind of cooking then: RV cooking. 

Here's one thing that does inspire me: Sahsez' pumpkins happen to be in the same patch with some sage that I planted a couple of years ago.  When I saw the two side by side, I instantly thought "Pumpkin ravioli with sage butter! Mmmm!"  So you see my tastebuds are really ready for some colder temperatures. 

Supermarket love

Much as I love, and usually prefer, teeny little gourmet grocery shops and ethnic grocery shops and cafe/delis and specialty shops, I have a lot of appreciation and affection for good supermarkets.  (I also have a lot of loathing for awful supermarkets and these seem to be the norm, unfortunately.)

My local grocery store is pretty good.  It's constantly winning grocer awards.  I used to be quite enamoured of it, but maybe just because I'm so used to it, the charm has worn off.  Now I am more likely to complain that the bread and milk are too expensive than to marvel at the selection of gourmet oils or get excited that they sell Wildfire bread and free-range chicken parts. They also recently enraged me by putting a new policy into effect where you're not allowed to take unbought groceries outside where they have a lot of produce and flowers on display.  You're supposedly expected to leave your cart of groceries inside, grab a basket, shop outside, then transfer your outside groceries into your inside cart.  This is absolutely ridiculous and I refuse to do it.  So far, no one has harrassed me about it but if they ever do, I might just have to stop shopping there.  I hope this doesn't happen because it's damn convenient to be able to walk for three minutes and get most of what I need to feed the family.   

I still have a lot of love for Thrifty Foods, the top grocery chain on the island.  Top points to them for a good cheese selection in most locations, carts that don't require you to have a quarter or a loonie to use them, and an abundance of carts with infant seats.  They lose points for having a poor selection of free-range and organics meats.  Good fish counter, though, and nice produce. 

Probably my most exciting supermarket experience to date has been the Zehrs in Barrie, Ontario.   Zehrs is the southwest Ontario equivalent of Thrifty's, but of course, since it's in sw ontario, it's on a much bigger scale.  The one in Barrie is definitely one of the better locations, and also it was the first one I ever went to so I was agog.  It was the first time I'd seen an olive bar, I think.  For the 16 months we lived in Waterloo, we lived right around the corner from another nice Zehrs, and I went there almost daily.  Tobias describes Zehrs as a cross between an upscale gourmet shop and Costco.  What could be better than that?  Of course, Zehrs has an unfair advantage over any BC supermarket because it's legal to sell wine in supermarkets in Ontario, and it isn't here.   

This was part of what made the supermarkets in Europe great too: you could pick up a great (and cheap!) Bordeaux or a couple of Belgian beers just an aisle over from where you grabbed your sliced loaf and jam.

A year ago this week, I was as thrilled to explore Sainsbury's for the first time as Sahsez was to visit Legoland.  In the Adrian Mole books, (which I've read at least 5 times each) Adrian's family shops at Sainsbury's and I'd always wanted to know what it was like.  I'd also read about it online and was dying to shop there.  For me I think it was about a general anglo-fascination that would be fed by living like an English person:  shopping at Sainsbury's and calling my dinner "tea".   

When I finally got there, I could have spent hours examining every little "dinner in a bag" and weird British condiment.  Unfortunately, the actual taste of the Sainsbury's prepared foods was pretty much the same as all prepared foods I've tried: lacklustre.  But I still like their produce selection, and the general atmosphere of the shops.  My large reusable Sainsbury's bag is my favourite souvenir from that vacation. 

When I lived in Dublin in '96, I loved shopping at Superquinn, despite their only carrying one shape of pasta.  This was before I was big into cooking though, so I suspect it was just the novelty of being on my own (living away from my parents for the first time) that made shopping there so exciting. 

Albert Heijn was something I'd never heard of before we got to the Netherlands, but I quickly fell in love, especially with the Museumplein location in Amsterdam, which had a cool sloping roof that Sahsez loved to climb on.  Typically European things that make Albert Heijn wonderful: everybody using reusable shopping bags, lots of fresh bread, amazing yogourt and beer selections.  Especially Dutch things that make Albert Heijn wonderful: wide range of goudas and smoked fish and everybody toting their shopping home on their bikes.  Only complaint: resuable grocery bags not nearly as attractive as the Sainsbury's ones. 

When I spent five weeks in the Dordogne in '02, my roommate Amelie did most of the grocery shopping, but I did make a couple of very rewarding trips to an Intermarche outside of Montignac, where I revelled in 1-liter-sized Coke (which I bought just for the novelty of the strange size of the bottle), frozen pizza with cabecou, my most favourite cheese in the world, cheap foie gras, and a butcher who, we later found out, thinks it is perfectly reasonable to pack up the head of the rabbit you want butchered and wrapped, along with the rest of the body parts.  (I think Amelie turned vegetarian the day I mistakenly cooked and served her the head, complete with teeth. What can I say?  I didn't careful examine each frozen piece, just bunged it in the pot and cooked it up!)

It'll be a long time before I visit New York again (went with my dad and sister ten years ago for a week) but I felt like I was there when I read Ayun Halliday's recent post about a cool new supermarket in Brooklyn.  Nice to know I'm not alone in having a thing for good supermarkets.  I wish our local chain of Fairway Markets was like the New York  ones.  Alas, no.  (But they do have a truly wonderful selection of Asian imports). 

For years I have been hearing about Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, but have never been inside either.  I won't say that visiting these places is what most excites me about our upcoming southwest US tour, but it's up there!  Godiva's propane is broken right now and both my dad (co-owner) and Tobias are happy to leave it broken.  I, however, am insisting that we get it repaired before we go on our trip.  Seriously, what is the point of going on a road trip in the wonderful USA, where Whole Foods opportunities abound, and then not being able to actually cook anything?  Restaurants are all well and good, but I think shopping at strange supermarkets and cooking dinner oneself is way more fun.  I wonder if Trader Joe's has souvenir reusable shopping bags.

100 New Recipes: Recipes 68-70

Ooh, things are slowing down on the new recipe front.  Not feeling very innovative, it's true. 

Recipe Number 68: Sicilian Vinegar Chicken - From Forever Summer by Nigella Lawson.  I forgot to add a key ingredient: tomatoes.  Still, this was okay.  M'hijo even ate some the next day, when I chopped the leftover cooked chicken into tiny bits to make pesto chicken salad sandwiches.  The leftovers actually overshadowed the main event. 

Recipe Number 69: Roasted Tomato Salad - From Delia Smith's Summer Collection.  Pretty good, but not nearly as transcendental as her roasted red peppers.  Those are amazing. 

Recipe Number 70: Chevre and caramelized onion quiche - From my own brain.  I used the Joy of Cooking flaky pastry recipe, blind-baked the crust, put a bunch of Woolwich chevre and caramelized onion on the crust, covered it with four eggs and 1.5 cups of milk, s&p, and baked at 375 for 45 minutes (my oven is a bit cold).  My sister said it was the best quiche she'd ever tried.  Aw!

New Recipes 50-67

Gosh, it's been a long time since I did a 100 new recipes update.  Doing 17 at once is a bore, and I'm sorry.  Let's just try to get through this together. 

Lamb Chops and mcp

Tuesday night's dinner doesn't really qualify for 100 new recipes, but it does deserve a mention.  It was a dinner that owed its greatness to the the component ingredients, rather than anything I did to them. 

I got the lamb chops very cheap at Pepper's that morning and intended to get them in marinade immediately, but didn't get around to it until about half past four.  The chops had my favourite combination of stickers on their package: a green one reading "ORGANIC" and a red one that said "REDUCED".  Jackpot!  My sister is shocked that I buy reduced meat and fish at Pepper's, not because she wouldn't do it herself, but because she assumed I would look down my nose at anything that said "Should be eaten or frozen on the day of purchase".  Oh how wrong she is.  There's nothing that makes me happier than seeing that red REDUCED label on some fresh halibut or sockeye salmon unless it's the red label/green label combination.  Even if I'm not at all in the mood for steak, I will always buy one if it's got the red label/green label combo, and pop it in the freezer for another day. 

The marinade I used was nothing exciting: oil and lemon juice, s&p, garlic, rosemary and parsley.  Likewise, I did nothing remarkable to the potatoes: just boiled them, then treated them to a butter and dill bath.  The only thing I actually made was that blue cheese dressing, using less garlic this time.  The greens were of the pre-washed, plastic bag variety. 

Tobias put the chops on the bbq, but we ran  out of propane halfway through so he finished them on the grill pan.  The baby was out-of-sorts which meant I had to hold him while I ate, but this gave me the excuse I needed to pick up my lamb chop by the bone and eat it with my hands, getting  every last bit of meat. 

The wine was an Australian Bordeaux-style blend by Penmara.  It's called mcp because it's a blend of merlot, cab. franc, and petit verdot.  Micheline said it would go with lamb and boy did it ever. 

Oh what a meal! No dessert was necessary. 

New Recipes 35-40

New Recipe Number 35: Strawberry and Rhubarb pie with a cream cheese crust - This is the one we had for M'hijo's four month celebration, and I forgot to record it earlier.  The strawberries were the last of the 2002 harvest from the freezer.  "But you didn't live in the yellow house in 2002!  You lived in family housing and had no garden!" says the astute and longtime reader.  True!  But when we moved into the house, the former owners left behind a few treats, including a bottle of champagne and two glasses, and frozen rhubarb and strawberries from the garden.  Wasn't that sweet? 

Anyway, so the strawberries were frozen but the rhubarb was fresh from the ground.  I'm not the queen of pie pastry, but the cream cheese pastry recipe from the Joy is pretty foolproof.  No blind-baking though.  I'm of the mind that such a wet filling demands blind baking, but what do I know, really?  I'm still a novice at this pastry game. 

New Recipe Number 36: Marinated Cukes with Asian Flavour - From my favourite new food blog, Dirty Sugar Cookies by Ayun Halliday, whose zine, the East Village Inky, I've been reading and loving for years.  These were great, and I'd like to try them again and sprinkle some toasted sesame seeds over. 

New Recipe Number 37: Breaded pork chops - If doing 100 New Recipes has taught me anything, it's how much I rely on the All-New Joy of Cooking to help fill my family's bellies.  Tobias made the breaded pork chops from it on Saturday night, and man they were really tasty!  I usually buy Hutterite-raised meat from my butcher, but a few weeks ago, I broke down and ordered a big pack of pork chops from Thrifty's, and froze a few for future use.  So they were not the best-quality, and they had been frozen for several weeks, and the recipe was still great. 

New Recipe Numer 38: Mushroom gravy - In my opinion, it would make no sense to have breaded pork chops and not have mushroom gravy (and mashed potatoes).  I've never made one, but I just flew by the seat of my pants and it turned out delicious. 

Instructions

Make a roux (about  2T butter, 2T flour), cook it, then add about a cup of mushroom broth (I use Harvest Sun mushroom bouillon cubes).  Whisk, whisk, whisk, taste it.   Good but wrong colour.  Cheat with a litle Kitchen Bouquet.  Ah, now it's a nice dark brown.  Whisk, cook, let it thicken, yum.  Distract husband, discreetly pour in some Villa Antinori Toscana (or any white, or even red, I suppose, if you want, although I wouldn't) from your glass.  If he sees you putting good drinking wine in the gravy he will fuss.   Taste.  Could use even more wine.  Distract and pour again.  Now add all the sliced mushrooms that you can get your hands on and let it simmer on v, v, v low heat for oh, say, five minutes.  Make a well in the middle of your mashed potatoes and make your own little mushroom gravy volcano.  Dig in! 

New Recipe Number 39: Smothered sunchokes with tomatoes and onions - Well, I got more sunchokes in my Spud box, but I didn't want to do a gratin of any kind, so I went hunting for something different.  Apparently, Marcella Hazan is the world's biggest sunchoke fan, since her book, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, has at least half a dozen sunchoke recipes in it, compared to all of my other cookbooks, which have around zero.   With this one, you just cook up some onions, garlic, tomato and parsley and add hunks of sunchoke and cook for a long time, and it turns out very tasty.  Can't wait to get more sunchokes!

New Recipe Number 40: Grilled Shrimp Skewers - Once I had Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking open last night, I figured I might as well cook my whole dinner from it.  So, loosely following Hazan's recipe,  I defrosted 15 big shrimp, stuck them on three skewers, and then pressed on a paste made from olive oil, garlic, parsley, and Breton crackers.  Tobias barbecued them for two minutes a side. They turned out pretty good, slightly chewy.  Would have been better with fresh shrimp.   

Ramping up for Easter weekend

In many ways, Easter is a bigger deal than Christmas for me.  Certainly from a religious perspective, it's more important.  From a work perspective, it's better because there are no gifts and no decorations.  Which doesn't mean that my to-do list today isn't immense!  On the last day before Good Friday I need to

..call my butcher and beg and plead with him to get me a ham for Sunday.  I completely forgot to do this last week  Done, sort of.  The butcher no longer has any bone-in hams available except the ones currently in the case.  So now I need to call Abu and see if she will stop by on her way home from work and pick one up.  That's assuming they have some left at 3 o'clock.  Sigh.

..shop and bake for Sahsez' Third Annual Good Friday Tea Party, all whilst resisting the urge to lick the chocolate off my fingers

..do at least three loads of laundry.  Yesterday's laundry day was a bit of a wash (HA!) because of a very attention-hungry baby, motherly fatigue, and a sparring class that I wasn't willing to miss

..email the head pastor at my church the list of songs my kids will be singing at the Easter morning service Done. 

..make some phone calls to find out which is the best church service to attend tomorrow morning Done.  Found this information on the web.

..harrass Tobias to pick up some Dolly mixture from the British sweet shop and some goose fat (for the Easter Sunday roast potatoes) downtown today Done, except that the charcuterie near Tobias' office doesn't have any goose fat, but they do have some duck confit, and they'll pack up some "just fat" for him.

..make the house spic and span

..shop for and plan the hot cross buns

..drop off cookies at two different neghbours' houses to thank them for taking care of a fallen tree limb for me this week Done.  Social crisis (being considered an ingrate by my neighbours) averted. 

..pump some milk so that others may help feed M'hijo this weekend

..prepare my heart and soul and think about the Passion (yikes!)

..hold a conference with the Easter Bunny to make sure he knows that since we now have TWO children in our house, he should hide TWICE as much candy this year, even though ONE child will hunt and eat it ALL

..keep M'hijo clean, fed, and happy.

Here we go!

Spaghetti Bolognese and Amizetta Complexity

My meal planning takes many forms.  Sometimes I know on Sunday exactly what time I'm going to start making the soup on Thursday and the ingredients are already in the fridge, just waiting for 4:30pm Thursday to make their appearnace.  In Appetite, Nigel Slater writes that he dislikes this far-ahead planning of meals.  He wonders, how can you know on Sunday what you are going to want to eat on Thursday? I agree with him, and in an ideal world, I would be a little more spontaneous.  But until my kids are older (or perhaps until I've retired) that eat-exactly-what-I'm-in-the-mood-for-and-everything-is-absolutely-at-its-peak-freshness-at-all-times lifestyle is just not in the picture. 

La Lent

When I go to church or do any other religious activities Tobias calls it my "perfect life of piety". This photo is for him.

So I am giving up chocolate for Lent, which, if you know me well, may seem a bit weird, since I'm not much of a chocolate lover. Or it may seem completely normal, because it's easy to give up something that you don't care that much for anyway. However, you should know that I have developed a bit of a chocolate habit of late, so in fact I am giving up something that I do find myself wanting on a daily basis.