Herbs and Spices, Medical, Ride, Mandarin,

I have been thinking about fresh herbs which are always nice to have, but difficult to always have them available when you need them. The chicken recipe I posted yesterday was supposed to have fresh tarragon. It is winter here, so couldn't grow it outside, in an apartment there isn't room to grow it (and lots of other herbs) inside so I would have to buy it specially. So, you do that and end up with a large bunch of tarragon which wouldn't keep fresh all that long so most of it would be wasted. It's OK

for professional cooks because they are using this stuff all the time, but impossible for the home cook without access to a herb garden of some kind. If only. Talking of herbs and, of course, spices, I was completely out of cloves and cashews. I don't buy the latter at my grocery store any more as I can get them far cheaper at Bulkville which has recently opened in the same shopping mall. Much to my surprise my grocery doesn't sell whole cloves. Bulkville only had Pepper Cashews, I tasted one, not bad, Matt is a pepper freak anyway, so that's what I bought. As for the cloves, I ended up with way more than I needed, but they do keep. I will certainly buy all my herbs and spices there, it is so much cheaper. Mind you it is a bit of a walk for me, but surprisingly I managed pretty well yesterday. I just discovered a few other uses for cloves.

• Ayurvedic medicine used cloves for tooth decay, halitosis, and bad breath.
• In Chinese medicine, clove was considered to possess aphrodisiac properties.
• Ground cloves are traditionally applied to minor cuts for healing purposes.
• Clove tea is a popular warm beverage to relieve congestion.
• Clove oil helps relieve headaches, flatulence, as well as reduce stretch marks.
• It is also popularly used as a bug and insect repellant. Just add a few drops to water and see them vanish!

I use them when I make bread sauce to go with turkey, I stick an onion with cloves and then sweat it in milk for a long time prior to adding fresh breadcrumbs (having removed the onion and cloves) then some butter and cream. I should make it more often, no reason not to have it with chicken.

Well, went to see the urologist who examined Matt and has determined that he doesn't have a bladder infection but is sending him for a kidney ultrasound. Assume that's what mine will be on Thursday. I was delighted by the ride. Joe picked us up promptly, dropped us at St. Mary's and told us to phone the office when we were ready. Did so and it turned out he was already outside waiting for us. Great. Doing the same thing on Thursday. It costs less than parking and is door to door of course. 

Wednesday, today, we are going to the Mandarin again with a couple of friends, haven't been with them since Sept./Oct. Suspect it was for my free birthday meal in September. We usually go together at least once a month. Oh dear, I'll have to eat more Hot and Sour Soup!!!

OK, went back to early blogs and came across this Weight Watcher's recipe which we used to make a lot at one time, well Matt did. If you can't get plaice, flounder is very similar.

Plaice and Tomato Pinwheels

Serves 2

12 oz plaice fillets
4 tsp made mustard (that's Coleman's or Keen's mixed with water). You could use Dijon for a milder flavour
8 oz cherry tomatoes
juice of 1 lemon
4 Tbs chopped parsley
1 tsp powdered rosemary
1/2 tsp salt and pepper

Skin the fillets, slit in half lengthways and spread one side with mustard. Wrap each half
fillet around a tomato, mustard side inwards. Secure with wooden cocktail sticks. Arrange
the fillets in a shallow dish, sprinkle with lemon juice, parsley, rosemary, salt and pepper.
Bake in the over 400°F, for 15-20 minutes. Serve with French cucumber salad.

French Cucumber Salad

Serves 2

4 oz. cucumber, peeled and diced (if you use an English cucumber, no need to peel)
pinch mixed herbs
2 Tbs cider vinegar (or white wine vinegar)
ground black pepper.

Arrange the cucumber on the plate, mix the herbs with the vinegar and pepper and pour
over the cucumber.

As they are shown in the picture, I suppose I had better add the rest.

Pineapple Sherbet.

Serves 2

1 envelope gelatine
4 rings unsweetened pineapple
4 tbs pineapple juice
4 tbs lemon juice
pinch powdered ginger.

Dissolve the gelatine in a heatproof dish with 2 tbs water, over hot water. Place the
pineapple rings and juice in a blender, blend until smooth. Add the dissolved gelatine.
Blend for 2-3 minutes. Pour into 2 dessert glasses then chill and sprinkle with ginger.

Have a great day

More Christmas

People keep talking about the goodies we are going to have over the holidays. I don’t think I am fixing a lot more than any of you would and in some instances probably a lot less. However, starting with Christmas Eve, we had Sweet and Sour Shrimp which I posted on May 1, 2014. It is a very simple recipe and quick to do. We followed it with a slice of the mincemeat tart I bought in November at the Crossroads Restaurant when we went on our Travel League Bowling.

Once upon a time my family used to serve slices of delectable ham and champagne as a brunch. Matt and I turned that into champagne cocktails as Matt isn’t that enamoured of champagne. Then I found out I had diabetes so we have changed it so that I have breakfast at the normal time and the ham for lunch. I will probably have a Kir Royale and Matt, still not being that keen on champagne, will probably have beer. When I say delectable ham, in those days first my parents and later on us, would buy a cooked ham such as a York ham (not available in North America) or the best we could find. A good ham should still have the fat on it too which improves the taste. We did not make the mistake of cooking it again. Unfortunately these days it really isn’t worth it for the two of us to buy a large ham (and we can’t get small ones, not like I am describing) so we are having thin slices of Black Forest ham. The other important thing is, of course, Colman’s Mustard. That is a must. I guess that is a play on words but… I am sure there are other English hams as good but after 40 odd years away from the UK, I don’t remember what they were. The mustard should be powder form that you mix fresh as needed. I don’t wish to imply one cannot buy good ham in Canada, in fact the Black Forest ham we had was delicious.

Then for dinner I cooked a turkey breast, which I served with homemade gravy, roast potatoes, Brussels Sprouts and bread sauce. How odd, I have mentioned bread sauce several times since I started blogging but I have never given a recipe. This will be followed by Christmas Pudding (Plum Pudding) and rum butter sauce.  No, no cranberry. I recently discovered the reason it’s called plum pudding, when there are no plums in it, is because the Victorians used to call raisins, plums. We will be drinking a white wine with dinner, probably La Vielle Ferme which is a wine we both enjoy very much.

Tomorrow a large piece of pork leg. I should say today I guess.

Bread Sauce

I make bread sauce the way my mother used to make it. I don’t know, and have never worked out the amounts, I use a small pan and a small onion so I am guessing not a lot more than 1 cup of milk – enough to just cover the onion. I then use three slices of bread from which I have cut the crusts and crumbed them in the blender.
Stick whole cloves into a small onion and place in a pan of milk. Sweat this as long as possible. I usually start early in the morning so it can really absorb the flavours. I then throw away the onion and add fresh breadcrumbs, a knob of butter and add cream until I get a nice creamy consistency.

Have a great day

Friday, Cooking, Oktoberfest.

I decided to make some soup for this evening. I ended up with beans (black and white) with spinach and tomatoes and chucked in a handful of basil. Obviously onions, garlic and chicken bouillon were in the mix. It tastes very good. Maybe not totally appropriate for the weather, but…. Matt says if it’s too warm we can turn on the air, true I guess. We certainly have been getting some lovely weather. Later: The soup was very good. Now have some in the freezer.

Whilst waiting for the soup to cook I looked at my email and found a flyer from Zehrs, our local grocery

store. Lo and behold, beef rib roasts at half price. I couldn’t go out so Matt went down and got a couple of nice looking roasts which we double wrapped and put in the freezer. Just what I need for my new horseradish. Won't be eating either of them for a while though, turkey first.

The dicky bird (turkey breast) is out and defrosting  I always cook it in an oven bag - so much easier. I have never cooked a whole turkey in an oven bag, but done a few turkey breasts and they turn out very well. Maybe not as brown as if cooked the regular way. I guess I could unbag it and brown it off in the oven for a while, but I have never bothered. Under normal circumstances we would have roast potatoes, but I don’t really want to bust my diet that much and Matt is just as happy with a baked potato with butter in it. We make our roast potatoes by parboiling peeled potatoes, draining them, and then cooking them in the oven in hot fat. If you scratch the potatoes with a fork before roasting, they come out extra crispy.
For those of you seriously thinking about making bread sauce, there is a better description of how to make it in this blog.
Our radio is blaring out polkas today, it’s the beginning of Oktoberfest and they “tapped the keg” in downtown Kitchener this afternoon. This music will be played a lot during the next week and Matt hates it so he is going to be out of luck. Something we have always avoided. Neither of us is good with crowds. I have mentioned before that this is the biggest Oktoberfest celebration outside of Munich. Many Germans settled in this area which gave impetus to the occasion at the beginning.

I thought this pudding looked delicious and it will certainly be on my menu in the near future. I found it at Cooking.com

Buttermilk Puddings with Mango Sauce

Source: Dessert - The Grand Finale
Serves 2

INGREDIENTS
Puddings
1/4 cup plus 3 tablespoons heavy cream
1/2 cup sugar
1/6 oz gelatine
1 tablespoon water
1/2 vanilla bean
1 cup buttermilk
Mango Sauce
1 mango, peeled and pitted
1 tablespoon confectioners' sugar

DIRECTIONS
Puddings:
Combine 1/4 cup of the cream with the sugar in a saucepan and bring to the boiling point. Remove from heat.
Dissolve the gelatine in the water. Stir into the cream mixture and mix well. Transfer to a bowl and stir in the buttermilk. Split the vanilla bean and scrape the seeds into the pudding. Refrigerate for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Whip the remaining 3 tablespoons of the cream and fold into the mixture. Pour into 2 lightly oiled 1-cup metal moulds. Fill each mould right to the top. Wrap with plastic; refrigerate for 2 hours.
Mango Sauce:
Place the mango flesh and sugar in a food processor. Puree. Strain through a sieve. Unmould each pudding and serve with Mango Sauce.

Have a great holiday weekend – well it is for Canadians. I should say Gemütlichkeit.

Bowling, Turkey Dinner.

We bowled, I was good, well for the first two games. The third was pretty mediocre, but I felt quite chuffed about the first two. We were joking that one of our friends got two strikes in a row but not the third so he wouldn’t have a turkey for Thanksgiving this weekend. One more friend joined us, I was expecting more but they didn’t arrive, will have to talk to them again. We had a real fun afternoon. I talked to one of the proprietors about tournaments but they don’t really do anything about them. If one joins the Five Pin Bowlers Association, I think it qualifies one to enter, I don’t know if our membership is current. May be too late for this year anyway.

Remembered a couple of things I need for our celebration turkey dinner on Saturday, you may remember that I make bread sauce to go with my turkey. I don’t bother with Cranberry, Matt doesn’t much like it and I am not enthusiastic. Never ate it in the UK although I believe people do these days. I first talked about Bread Sauce in 2008, it is a pretty decadent sauce with cream and butter, but on a special occasion, what the heck. It shouldn’t be too thick, nor should it be too runny. I just love the stuff and if I don’t have it, it ruins my enjoyment of the turkey. I think we will be drinking a Pinot Grigio with the bird, one of our favourite white wines.

Last Saturday we had the Beef Stroganoff for dinner which I posted at the beginning of October. This left me with some sour cream and some wild mushrooms. We also had extra leeks as we had bought a bunch without realising we already had some. So, I invented a recipe which turned out really well. Typically, I forgot to take a picture.


Chicken with Leeks, Mushrooms and Sour Cream

We enjoyed this very much. It was my own invention based on recipes I had been reading.

2 Tbs olive oil divided
4 oz mixed wild mushrooms
3 leeks, white and pale green part, washed thoroughly and cut into pieces
1/2 - 1 cup chicken stock
3/4 tub sour cream
4 chicken breasts
1. Heat 1 tbs olive oil in large skillet and sauté mushrooms for 3 or 4 minutes. Add leeks and stock and put a lid over the skillet to allow the vegetables to steam until the leeks are softened. Stir in the sour cream.
2. In a separate pan heat the remaining oil and  brown the well seasoned chicken breasts on all sides.
3. Add the chicken breasts to the vegetable mixture and put into a 350°F oven for an hour. Part way through cooking time, check on the moisture and add a little more stock if required.
4. DON’T FORGET TO WRAP THE SKILLET HANDLE IN FOIL. It protects it in the oven.

Servings: 4

Have a great day

Food, Ramblings about This and That.

I’m a little surprised that I have never posted a recipe for Bread Sauce, but if I did, I can’t find it. Its a very easy recipe but I make it with ingredients similar to Mrs. Beeton but with the procedure adopted by my mother who was, without doubt, one of the greatest cooks I have ever known, I am talking gourmet here, not just everyday cooking. To make this, one of the oldest of British sauces, you take a small onion and stick it with cloves, how many is a question of taste, I use about 6 or so. You then place the onion in a small pan and add around 1/2 Cup of milk (minimum 2% won’t make a good sauce with anything lower) bring to the boil and then turn down the heat and “sweat” the onion for several hours. That is you leave the milk on the lowest heat and allow the onion to sit in the warm milk til the flavours are absorbed. Shortly before needed, remove the onion and cloves and then add about 2 oz of freshly made breadcrumbs. Bring the milk back to the boil and then allow the bread to simmer until it has expanded to a nice thick sauce. Add about an ounce of butter, some seasoning, and then finally some whipping cream, enough to thin down the consistency of the sauce again. Cover with Saran wrap until service. You can actually freeze this sauce I understand; I have never done so. Sunday night we had cold turkey and I had a baked sweet potato with some butter on it. I tried that in the States and decided I really liked it. Matt doesn’t like sweet potato for some reason. I do.

Today is Columbus Day in the States and Thanksgiving here in Canada. In my part of Canada, Oktoberfest is well under way with a parade and lots of beer drinking. Gemutlichkeit is in full swing. On Saturday I cooked the turkey breast (in other words the oven was on) and the sun shone all day so we had to have the air conditioner on because it was so warm in the apartment. Like a summer’s day. We are lucky we have large windows which overlook the park and in the winter months, the sun pours through them.

I have decided I hate blister packs. When you take 365 pills a day like I do, oh alright 364!! it is very frustrating to have to pop them out of their blisters. If only pharmaceutical companies read this blog. I don’t know why they use them, I know the company I used to work for (part of the P & G group) used blister packs, but I really don’t know why. Shelf life perhaps? I’ve never heard Matt swearing about it, so maybe he doesn’t mind and maybe lots of people don’t mind, but Matt doesn’t take nearly as many pills as I do. If you shake me I rattle.

We got a phone call on Saturday asking us to go see our doc after the ECGs we both had the other day. Actually it turned out, when we went in on Sunday, that she didn’t need to see me, but she was warning Matt that he had a ‘not serious’ problem which they would keep an eye on. Basically his heart is not pumping correctly. Poor bugger is going to be wearing a heart monitor for 2 weeks which he is not looking forward to. Hopefully it can be removed to shower otherwise no-one will be getting near him for a while. However it does turn out that his problem is why his heart is pumping out occasional blood clots which causes his TIAs. Now he is on Warfarin, that should be a thing of the past.

Here’s a weird one for you, although come to think of it we had a neighbour who used tomato soup in a cake, but sauerkraut!! Bick’s say it makes a very moist cake. It certainly looks pretty good. I’ll have to try this just for the hell of it.

Secret Ingredient Chocolate Cake

Source Bick’s

2 ¼ cups (550 mL) Robin Hood® All-Purpose Flour
½ cup (125 mL) cocoa
1 tsp (5 mL) baking powder
1 tsp (5 mL) baking soda
½ tsp (2 mL) salt
2/3 cup (150 mL) butter, softened
1 ½ cups (375 mL) sugar, granulated
3 eggs
2 tsp (10 mL) vanilla
1 cup (250 mL) water
¾ cup (175 mL) Bick’s® Wine Sauerkraut

1. Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C). Grease and flour two 8” (20cm) round layer cake pans.
2. Combine first 5 dry ingredients. Mix well.
3. In a separate bowl cream together butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla together on medium speed of electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add dry ingredients to creamed mixture alternately with water, making 3 dry and 2 liquid additions, combining lightly after each. Stir in sauerkraut.
4. Spread batter evenly in prepared pans. Bake in preheated oven for 35 to 40 minutes, or until cake springs back when lightly touched. Cool 10 minutes, then remove from pan to wire rack. Cool completely. Fill and frost as desired.

Makes: 12 servings

Have a great day

Christmas, Boxing Day, Food,

We ended up with a white Christmas, but as they are forecasting lots of rain I am not sure how much will remain. It is the first time, in four decades, that the whole of Canada had a white Christmas. I guess they don't get much snow out west in Vancouver, etc. Which means they may not be really prepared for it so could be really cursing it. The brined turkey breast turned out beautifully moist again, I really do like doing that recipe. I also had forgotten to check on packets of bread sauce which I like with turkey, a fairly old fashioned sauce which not too many people seem to eat any more. I honestly don't remember if you can buy it here or whether I imported it from Britain. Anyway, I can't do without my bread sauce, so I grabbed my Mrs. Beeton (circa 1935) checked the recipe, shoved a few whole cloves into an onion and then sweated that onion for several hours in milk. Just before supper I added dried breadcrumbs (didn't have any fresh white) and stirred it til it was thick enough, at which time I added a knob of butter and a dollop of thick cream. It was delicious. Probably better than the packet if not as easy. Traditionally we eat Brussels Sprouts with turkey; a lot of people in Ontario seem to add rutabaga (Swede) as well. However, although we both like it, we don't add it to our Christmas meal. I can't remember if I have commented about rutabaga and/or Swede here, it seems to be a much harder vegetable than the one we had in the UK. As a boy, Matt would buy a Swede on his way to school, get the greengrocer to cut off the top then spoon out the flesh and eat it. You couldn't do that with the ones we get here, you would break the spoon. However, when cooked, they taste the same, so I really don't know what the difference is. According to Wikipedia there isn't any difference, but if you have ever tried to prepare one in this neck of the woods having been used to preparing them in the UK, I assure you the Canadian one is much tougher. I can't handle them, Matt has to do the cutting. I didn't mention, on Chrismas Eve Matt bought me a live lobster as an extra present. For some reason, I turned squeamish and wouldn't cook it, I made him do it. I wasn't squeamish about eating it though, it was delicious. He also bought some Borgonzola cheese which is a Canadian version of Cambazola which is a German combination of French Brie and Italian Gorgonzola. Funnily enough, we neither of us like Cambazola, but we do like Borgonzola click here which is less sharp and more creamy. In fact, I think I might have some for lunch. I mentioned, in my last blog, about daughter #2's chocolate fountain, I asked her if she had used it again, she said she had once, but that you really needed a bunch of people to make proper use of it. I didn't get the impression they would be using it this Christmas. Apart from which, she said they had been given so many chocolates, or chocolate cookies at school, they had had a surfeit of chocolate (is that possible?) Both she and her oldest son are teachers. I figure no-body needs recipes right at the moment, unless its for using up leftovers and my favourite leftover turkey recipe can't be made any more without a lot of work. It included a packet of Bird's Eye white onions in cream sauce which are certainly not available round here and I am not sure if they are still available in the UK. One could always make them from scratch, but that is the kind of thing one should have done before Christmas. I just Googled and they are still available somewhere, but not in Kitchener. So, if you live somewhere where these are available, here is the recipe.

Turkey With Creamed Onions
	8 oz pkg Birds Eye Creamed Onions 8 oz Cooked chicken or turkey 1 Tbs medium sherry 1 oz grated cheese (cheddar) pinch Nutmeg Prepare onions as directed on packet. Add poultry in slivers, together with the other ingredients. Simmer gently for 10 minutes. Add chopped parsley and serve on a bed of rice. Servings: 2

Have a great Boxing day.