Text 19209, 78 rader
Skriven 2011-12-18 19:38:00 av JIM WELLER (1:123/140)
Ärende: Weekend baking and bites
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Neither one of us had any work to do this weekend and all our
Christmas shopping was finished so we had lots of time to shop and
cook. So here's how we spent my time:

I started off with a trip to Buckley's right after work for fresh
fish and picked up six whitefish fillets, enough for three generous
meals for two. They were very fresh as they had been netted through
the ice earlier that same day.

Friday night I poached two fillets in a tarragon court bouillon and
boiled up a melange of diced Yukon Gold potatoes, carrots, a (very)
modest amount of rutabaga and broccoli stems and tops seasoned with
butter, savory and lots of black pepper. Then I combined the
vegetable stock and court bouillon and made a Lenten veloute sauce,
enriched with Minor's clam base, for the fish.

I also made a batch of mayo, half of which was left plain (except
for generous amounts of lemon juice, cayenne and powdered mustard)
and half of which became a sort of Thousand Island/Remoulade/Tartare
sauce fusion.

Saturday was fish again for lunch: my usual method with whitefish is
a quick shake in a bag with seasoned flour and then pan fried in
butter but this time I did them in the three step breading and deep
fried them: first the seasoned flour, then a dip in cold leftover
veloute instead of milk and egg, then the bread crumbs, which I had
seasoned with Back Bay steak seasoning and mixed Italian herbs. The
fusion mayo sauce went well with it. I also par-boiled some potatoes
and then finished them by simmering in some leftover veloute sauce.
That worked out very nicely.

Later I made up a batch of cheater Cinci chili, which although I
broke several cardinal rules of chili making, turned out very well.
The base was a batch of Roslind's very meaty leftover spaghetti red
sauce. I added a can of Heinz chili beans (a mix of pinto and
kidney) with diced red and green bell pepper in tomato sauce. They
turned out to be quite sweet! (WTF!) So I then added some Jamaican
Grace hot sauce which has a strong vinegar profile like Tabasco only
it's hotter. Since it was already sweet and sour I decided to go
Greek style and added allspice along with chili powder, garlic
granules and oregano. I served it over macaroni and in lieu of
"proper" cheese, used Parmesan (Grana Padano actually) cheese.
Despite all, it was a very tasty dish.

For Sunday I started the day with double smoked bacon, pancakes and
stewed apples, then made a fish chowder using up the last of the
fish and the veloute sauce.

In the meantime Roslind was in a baking frenzy. I had to go out and
buy a new coffee grinder for spices as she burned out the old one
and needed a batch of freshly powdered cloves and allspice. (We
never buy pre-ground anymore; they loose their flavour way too
fast).

Over the weekend she produced 3 loaves of honey white bread, 2 dozen
larded cold water buns, several batches of shortbread, a pan of
apricot chews (a sort of light fruit cake), 4 tourtieres, 2 dozen
tourtiere tartlets, 2 kinds of fudge and a deep dish apple pie with
a pastry bottom crust (leftover from the tourtiere making) and an
oatmeal crumble top crust. Except for one loaf of bread, four
tourtiere tartlets and the pie everything ended up in the freezer to
take south with us next week. We're heading down to Peace River on Dec.
21, over to Fort McMurray for Christmas and then back to Peace River
for New Years.




Cheers

YK Jim


... Cooking is for artists; baking is for control freaks.

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