One Meatball

Today’s #letslunch is a favorite of mine.  We all agreed to do a dish based on music.  For some strange reason the song that kept coming into my head is a jazz/blues song by Josh White from the ‘40s about a man who ‘could afford but one meatball’ and the subsequent humiliation he felt at ordering it.
I’m not going to offer my recipe, since we all have our favorites but I do grind my own meat – about half beef sirloin tip and half pork, add the spices, brown ‘em and then cook them in the sauce.
Check out the video here – and no, it’s not a how-to.  It’s just me messing around with the theme for fun!  After all, #letslunch for me is ALL about the fun!

What do chefs say? ‘Please Enjoy’. I sure hope that you did!

Hawaiian Chili?

Not exactly, but this is a chili I first made while I was living in Hawaii.  Backing up, this month’s #letslunch theme is chili.  In case you haven’t read all my posts (really?) #letslunch is a monthly virtual lunch date with some of the best cooks on twitter!  We choose a theme and then all post our individual versions on our blogs on the appointed day & we get to share recipes from around the world.  Oh and if you would like to join, we’d love to have you!

(Blissful enjoyment of said treat)

When chili was decided for this month’s lunch date, I took a trip down memory lane to my first batch of chili ever.  I had no real interest in chili, my interest was purely mercurial.  I was serving in the US Air Force stationed at the 548 RTG (Reconnaissance Technical Group) at Hickam AFB, Hawaii.  I was an Airman First Class (2 stripes, no star) and desperately wanted an early promotion to Sr Airman (3 stripes, no star) which meant a pay increase.  At the time, one had to interview before a panel of officers who would decide your fate.  It was kind of like a college interview in that they not only looked at your job performance but at your history of merit in the service, behavior on & off the job and – gack – community participation.  Keeping in mind that I was in my early 20s in the early 80s, living in Hawaii so you know that my off time was spent at the beach or a nightclub.  I had to find some way to rack up community points.  Enter the chili.  There was a base-wide chili cookoff and our squadron really wanted to best the other squadrons on the base.  I loved cooking so I figured, how hard can chili be?  Rules in hand, I trundled off to the BX for supplies.  This contest used International Chili Society rules so I was shocked to find that beans & pasta were expressly forbidden and one had 8 hours to make it start to finish.  That began my long affair with chili.  I dug up this photo from my friend Peggy (right) who unbelievably let me dress her up in all sorts of silly costumes in the name of chili.

Before you laugh too hard at the photo – showmanship was always a part of the contest and we were killer bees with killer chili.  If you look closely you can see that we are sticking out our stingers!

We even made the local news with our killer chili – notice how I made my friends wear the short nurse uniforms!  Anyway, we won the first chili contest and part of the prize was entrance into the next level chili contest.  We won 4 contests this way, getting all the way to the Hawaii State finals where I was disqualified for having chili that was too hot for the wimpy Texan judges.  They did give me a large fire extinguisher as a consolation prize, however.

On to my present day chili. I decided, since I had time, to change it up a bit and instead of using ground meat, I braised & shredded instead.

I took some sirloin tip (it would have been better with brisket) and have again as much pork necks, marinated them overnight in red wine, garlic, mustard powder and garlic.  Braised them slowly in a 300 degree oven for about 4 hours, shredded them & set them aside.  Then I rendered about 4 slices of smoky bacon & sautéed a chopped onion and about 3 cloves of garlic in the fat.  Add about 2 cups of stewed tomatoes, chopped, 2 TBSP cider vinegar, 2 TBSP molasses, cumin, coriander, Worcestershire, paprika, smoke flavor (only cause I couldn’t use my smoker), chopped chipotle w/juices, diced jalapenos (frozen from our garden), epazote, 1/4 cup finely chopped kalamata olives (trust me on this),a few chopped oil packed sun dried tomatoes for brightness and anything else you happen to have lying around in the fridge!

I let the mixture simmer for about an hour before adding the meat back into the pot with it’s braising liquid.  Taste and adjust seasoning & simmer for another 30 minutes or so.  At the end, add in about 1/4 cup lime juice & some fresh cilantro.  Serve with grated cheese, chopped onions, cilantro, sour cream & lime on the side.  I prefer to serve this over a nice cheesy polenta but some idiot bought corn flour instead of corn meal so we made do with steamed rice as a base.

The flavors are complex and rich, very warming for a winter’s meal.  While I talked a good game on #letslunch, chili is as individual as your style. You can shred, chunk or grind your meat, or even skip the meat altogether – just get out a pot & give it a try!

TV maybe?

For the past year, due to my lack of a work permit in Canada, I have been volunteering at Access7 – the local cable co-op.  I started doing floor directing for the show Talk of the Town and then moved on to my own short piece called City Sleuth, which features the cool & unusual here in Regina.  Now, however, I am going to do a cooking show on Access, which should be a lot of fun!  I’m thinking of doing a theme of “Everyday Gourmet”, wherein we take your everyday dinners & kick ‘em into high gear.

This is a clip of the piece I did as a test piece for the station, so obviously it is not ready for prime time, nor will it air as is.  The ‘factoids’ are obviously made up – I have never even met Emeril Lagasse – and there are some editing errors such as the close up of the pork chop which is already seasoned, though I never seasoned the other side in the segment. So I would love to hear your comments, though please don’t point out the obvious editing snafus!

Here we go on air!

I would also love to hear what you think of the theme – would you prefer to watch a show about finding cool ingredients & cooking unusual dishes with them?  I am also toying with doing some molecular gastronomy, which I find a lot of fun!

Let me know what you think in the comments and I also need a title for the show! Thanks in advance!

Seduction on the Menu

This month’s #letslunch challenge is in honor of one of our foodie posters, Rashda Khan (better known to us as @spicebites on twitter) who had her first red hot romance novel published!  Now I am not a huge fan of the genre myself but I have huge respect for anyone who can turn out a novel – no easy feat to be sure.  Anywho – we all decided that our theme should be seduction foods in support of the steamy subject matter.
Yesterday, however, was a holiday and my husband and I did the usual running around town on errands and such so I really didn’t have time to whip something up, photograph & publish.  However, Friday evening found us hanging out sipping martinis watching a little tube. I was fonder of the martini than the television program so on my way back to the kitchen for a refill, I asked hubs if there was anything I could get for him.  He was feeling a bit loose and in good humor and responded “Sure, I could really go for a molten lava cake” and snickered at his own little joke. I thought about it for a few minutes and thought that seduction is as much about the surprise of an unexpected kindness as anything else – that’s romantic right?  So I looked up a recipe on my iPod and replied, “OK, that doesn’t take too long.” and off I trundled to the kitchen, martini in hand to whip up a late evening treat for my sweetie.

It’s actually quite easy to make:
Ingredients:

• 5 TBS butter
• 3.5 oz dark chocolate
• 2 large eggs & 1 egg yolk
• 3 TBS sugar
• 3 TBS flour
• 2 tsp cocoa powder
• pinch salt

preparation: (preheat oven to 425)
Melt the butter and chocolate together in the microwave on half power until chocolate is nearly melted and stir well to combine and finish melting chocolate.  Whisk eggs, egg yolk and sugar together until pale yellow and sugar is no longer visible.  Stir together the egg mixture and the chocolate mixture.  Sift flour, cocoa & salt over the mixture and fold until completely incorporated.  Spoon batter into 4  buttered 5oz ramekins & chill for 15 minutes in the fridge.  Place ramekins into a casserole dish and fill halfway up the sides with hot water.  Place into the oven on the middle rack and bake 10-15 minutes or until sides are just set.  Sift some powdered sugar atop & serve!
This truly is a fast & easy dessert, you can set the cakes for a few minutes and turn out onto a plate or if it’s 9:00 at night you can serve them in the ramekins as I did.  These are also great little foils for any fruit you have on hand or even a dollop of whipped cream or ice cream.
So seduction doesn’t have to be a well planned event, it can be spontaneous, surprising and romantic – it can also get you out of watching Grimm and still earn you a late night massage!
For all the seductive treats from my other #letslunch pals – check out my virtual magazine:  http://paper.li/geokaren/1318019351#

Tribute to LAM–the Haunting

This post is near and dear to my heart. I will start it off with my Halloween cookies which were brushed with edible tempera before baking and then decorated with royal icing. That, however, concludes the food portion of this post.

My dear departed Dad (LAM), had a Halloween tradition of scaring the bejeezus out of the neighborhood kids when we were growing up. All of his props were home made (this was well before the days of animatronics) he would use dry ice and build his own sets & make his own costumes. It was always something we looked forward to for months. And the best coming of age rite was being old enough to stay home and help scare the neighborhood kids instead of going out trick-or-treating!
My older brother (LAMII) has been building upon the traditions for decades – yes, I said decades, even enlisting his own son – LAMIII! LAMII, however has taken it to new heights with technology as you can see here in this video:

LAMII Halloween 2010

In past years I have dressed up and done small Halloween things for the trick-or-treaters but having lived mostly in apartments or gated communities, the effort would have been wasted. This year, however, I live in a suburban neighborhood ripe for haunting! I told hubby that I wanted to do a mini-haunted house and that’s all it took to get the ball rolling.
By now you know that I did a piece on Spirit Halloween for my City Sleuth show on local cable: City Sleuth and that got my ideas rolling but we didn’t have years worth of Halloween props & we had to be careful on the budget so off I went in search of deals!
Gerald gave us a roll of corrugated paper stone wall that we used to paper the main entry way and hubby even built a frame to enclose the area, which we also papered with the faux stone

I also trekked to the Dollar store for all sorts of props and came up with a bunch of flimsy headstones. Hubs, being the handy guy that he is had to go me one better and bought some thick styrofoam at Home depot along with some simulated stone spray paint and turned my little Dollar store purchase into truly cool headstones by cutting out the shapes, painting & then gluing my purchases onto them!

It also happened that the new neighbor had bought a bed and was about to recycle the box, when we swooped in and took it for our own. It became this casket (my work, not hubby’s!) with a little tape & black spray paint and another of those Dollar store headstones. The fingers creeping out of the casket were also Dollar store finds that we attached with wire & duct tape. After all, duct tape fixes everything.

In this photo you can also see the ‘blood’ streaked lanterns that we placed around the room on the walls – these were a summer’s end Superstore find for less than 2 bucks each that we painted black & of course, added our own blood. We used all LED candles for the inside. The lenticular photos we got at Wal-Mart & the Dollar store and added a bunch of little spot lights from – you guessed it – the Dollar store!
The candelabra behind the casket was a real find! I was at Gale’s florist here in regina, which also doubles as a craft store with much better prices than Michael’s. They had lots of Halloween goodies, like the gel blood splatters & fake knives for under a buck but I was looking for creepy candle sticks. So I asked. As luck would have it the owner told me she was throwing away two very large gothic candelabras and if I took them I would save her a trip to the dump! SCORE! These things added the perfect touch when fitted with LED candles and strewn with spider webs.
Then of course, you need creepy pumpkins – so I downloaded a pumpkin pattern and off I went. It was nice that Superstore had pumpkins on sale for less than 3 bucks each – any size!

We couldn’t get video of the inside since it was so dark but I do have video from outside and some pics from inside. The tunnel we got from Spirit Halloween – it was an instore prop that they let us tear down & cart away a couple of days before Halloween. The neighbors sure were surprised to see it go up!! The music in the video was some creepy classical that I downloaded from iTunes & then edited to add my own sound effects. We piped it outdoors and had it playing inside as well.

Outside Halloween 2011

Not as much fun or creep factor with the flash but you get the idea!
Hope your Halloween was as much fun as ours – This one was for you Dad!!!

High Tea – or just High?

This month my #letslunch pals on twitter (and there is getting to be a lot of us!) decided on High Tea as our virtual lunch theme.  Now what the heck would I know about High Tea?  I am an American, living in Canada and have absolutely no class so I was really out of luck on this one.  Plus, this weekend is Thanksgiving here in Canada so I had no time to research.  I decided it was like a normal tea – scones, pastries & small sweet bites (boy was I out to lunch) and made Saskatoon Berry tarlets, figuring that I could make them and then use them as a dessert choice for Sunday’s big Thanksgiving meal.  Hey, I am NOT lazy, just…er…creative.

Basically it’s a puff pastry shell, filled with mascarpone filling & topped with saskatoon berries, cooked in cassis.

I actually thought about making my own puff pastry from scratch but frankly unless you are making croissants (where it really matters), puff pastry from scratch is just a huge pain in the ass.  Trust me, as a survivor of radiation treatment for anal cancer, I am an expert on pains in the derriere.  So I purchased puff pastry shells and, completely free of guilt, popped them into a 400 degree oven until they were puffed and not quite golden brown, since I was going to bake them again.

(makes 6 tartlets)

Ingredients:

purchased pkg of puff pastry shells (OK, OK – yes I do feel guilty)

8 oz mascarpone cheese

1 egg

1/2 tsp vanilla

3 cups Saskatoon berry filling (recipe to follow)

Mix the mascarpone, egg and vanilla (I just used a wire whip) until smooth and fill the partially baked shells (make sure that you remove the inside of the shells!)

Pop them back into the 400 degree oven for about 10 minutes and then remove them immediately to a cooling rack to set.

Gently warm the berries and spoon over the cooled pastries & serve!

You could also add a nice big dollop of cream whipped with a hint of vanilla – which I will do on Sunday.  Honestly, I would have done it for you but hey, it’s thanksgiving and there was no room in my fridge to store whipped cream for two days!

For the saskatoon berries:

4 cups saskatoon berries (serviceberries)

1/2 c sugar

1/2 c cassis

2 TBS cornstarch mixed with 1/4 c water to make a slurry

Mix all ingredients in a heavy saucepan and simmer for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add cornstarch slurry to thicken and continue to cook for about 10 minutes.  Cool completely.

Check out the other great #letslunch posts here:

http://paper.li/geokaren/1318019351

Wedding Bells & Willow on the Wascana

How do you blog about your own wedding without sounding smug?  I have no idea so I will no doubt fail because, frankly, my wedding was the best I had ever been to.  Of course it was, because everything was just the way I wanted it.  Everyone’s own wedding should be their favorite.  I’m telling you about it here because the food was one of the major highlights but I will get to that in a moment.  To me, my friends and family that traveled so many miles to be here with me meant the world to me and took my wedding from happiness to sheer joy!  Peggy and Jessica came from Eugene OR; Amanda (who took most of the photos posted here) came from Scottsdale, AZ; Kirsten and Danielle came all the way from San Diego, CA (you’re next Danielle!), Cathy came in from Toronto and my Mom & Brother & family came in from Philadelphia, PA!  Of course my husband’s family came in from all over Canada too but that’s another post and you’re really here to talk about the food anyway.

The willow

yes, we went all out for guest transportation to and from the venue!

our grand entrance

We booked a local restaurant (Willow on Wascana) whose fare we had enjoyed on several occasions prior and knew to be focused on local fresh ingredients, which we really wanted to showcase.  So we sat down with the chef and the manager ahead of time to collaborate on a menu that would be uniquely ours for this special occasion.  As much as I’d like to take credit for the menu, I can’t.  The executive chef there; Tim Davies, listened to our ideas and comments and came up with an absolutely fantastic menu.  Dave, the manager and sommelier at the Willow, took this menu and created the perfect wine pairing for each of 7 courses – yes 7, not counting the passed hors d'oeuvres at cocktail hour! And, Tim came up with no less than three menus to please us, the vegetarians and the children!

groom, me and Chef Tim Davies

the menu

the menu

amuse bouche: pickled fennel, carrot and beet – really got the juices flowing & ready for the meal!

roasted sugar beet & goat cheese salad w/baby arugula, toasted walnuts and balsamic vinaigrette

Lamb and mint ravioli w/fresh garden peas, brown butter and grilled peach coulis (and my personal favorite of the evening!)

Sunflower satay trout w/beluga lentil pilaf, celeriac and apple pave and raspberry gastrique

Apple cider-brined wild boar and prarie cherry demi-glace w/saskatoon berry wnd vanilla whipped potato and fresh morels

 Chocolate chili mint and rhubabrb mousse (w/edible gold leaf for the groom)

Field berry tartlet w/apricot glaze

Prior to dinner there was a cocktail hour with passed hors d’vours and chocolate bacon martinis too!  Chef Tim made an amazing duck confit (for which I am still awaiting the recipe), a mushroom strudel and a white chocolate bacon toffee bar to go with the chocolate martinis!  The dinner was everything we had hoped for and more.  Each taste tantalizing course was paired with the perfect wine, too!

Oh and the view is pretty spectacular as well!

OK and being a chick – I have to include a pic of the back of my dress cause it totally rocked!

view the pic full res to see all the detail.

All in all – the wedding was perfect – the ceremony was touching and meaningful for us.  The food an the reception was incomparable – better than at any event I have ever attended and better than the most expensive restaurants!  The restaurant itself was cleared of tables & chairs (we ate ate in a tent attached to the deck) and the dancing continued late into the night with dancers from age 5 to 80!  The only downside of the dancing was that they played the Macarena.  Oh well, you can’t have everything!