Monday Night Dinner

I recently ordered a copy of The New Mediterranean Diet Cookbook out of a desire to eat better and get more pleasure out of the act of cooking itself.  I haven't made very many recipes out of it yet--my enthusiasm for cooking varies greatly from day to day, and when I have things set up for sewing it's pretty much impossible to use the kitchen--but the few recipes I have tried so far have turned out well.  I am looking forward to trying more.

I have two big grumbles, however.  The first is that the book really needs some menu suggestions.  I find it just... hard to navigate, somehow.  It would be helpful to know which recipes pair well together, and are perhaps easier to cook in conjunction.  So far I feel as though meals made from the cookbook manage to use every single dish in the kitchen (and have been difficult to coordinate time management-wise).  Or maybe it's just that I don't own enough pots and pans...

The other issue is that The New Mediterranean Diet Cookbook is really written for an audience that lives in a Big City.  My town may be called a city, and back during the gold rush you could get all sorts of spectacular luxuries and delicacies (it was "The Paris of the North"), but these days you have your choice of two little grocery stores with a fairly prosaic selection of food items.  Everything travels a great distance to get here, and is priced accordingly.  There is a farmer's market in the summer, with as short a season as you would expect.  Our summer is intense and brief.

So... reading in The New Mediterranean Diet Cookbook that one should "seek out the very best of local, regional, preferably organically and naturally raised products" is frustrating.  The author, Nancy Harmon Jenkins, often recommends seeking out ethnic food stores--as though everyone has a Lebanese or Greek supermarket just a few blocks away.  It's just such a different lifestyle and world-view.  For all of Jenkins' globe-trotting, I don't think she's every really lived anywhere terribly remote.  There are places in this world where you only have a choice of one brand of olive oil.

Grocery shopping for dinner tonight got me thinking about local versus exotic foods.  Yukon dog mushers often feed their sled dogs salmon because it is found in such an abundance (or was; the local fishery is in trouble as so many are).  And you can get these in the grocery store:

Exotic down south, but certainly a Dawson barbecue and bonfire staple.  They're really very good, if rather pricey.  While not exactly in line with the principles of a Mediterranean diet (which recommends very little red meat), it was a great dinner.  I had snap peas, tomato wedges and grilled zucchini on the side.  This may be one of the only times in my life that I have ever eaten zucchini voluntarily, and it may happen again soon.  I actually liked it!  I put it on the grill at the very end and cooked it quickly, so it was nicely blackened but still firm.

I took advantage of having the grill fired up and, thinking of tomorrow's dinner, threw a few other things on as well.

These peppers and eggplant are for a chilled salad from the book that I have wanted to make for about two weeks now.  I just had to wait for the eggplant to arrive from California!

Meat & Potatoes #13

When I first started doing a radio show three months ago, I used to imagine that I was talking to myself.  Somehow it just made it easier.  It took me a while to tell my family and friends outside of Dawson about the show, but I'm so glad I finally did.  This week I had all sorts of people tuning in from all over the place, and the telephone calls and Facebook shout-outs were so much fun.  One of my close highschool friends, Tamara, was listening in Korea!  I also thought I had a listener in Australia, but it turns out that my dear university chum Graham was listening from his hometown of Edmonton--definitely a less exotic location, but still awesome.  Other listeners were in Ottawa and on Salt Spring Island, as well as here in Dawson.

All these lucky folks got to listen to:

1. Beirut--Scenic World

2. Paul Simon--Graceland

3. Wilco--The Late Greats

4. Valery Gore--Strange Way

5. The Tragically Hip--Fireworks

6. Modest Mouse--People as Places as People

7. Angela McCluskey--It's Been Done

8. Jefferson Airplane--Today

9. Bobbie Gentry--Ode to Bille Joe

10. J.J. Cale--Cocaine

11. Cat Power--The Devil's Daughter

12. Bonnie 'Prince' Billy--Wolf Among Wolves

13. Calexico--All Systems Red

14. The White Stripes--Do

15. TV on the Radio--Poppy

16. The Hold Steady--Atlantic City

17. Final Fantasy--The CN Tower Belongs to the Dead

18. Sufjans Stevens--Casimir Pulaski Day

19. The Beta Band--Alleged

20. Human Highway--What World

21. Cake--Love You Madly

22. Scissor Sisters--Lights

23. The Juan Maclean--Dance With Me

24. The Jackson 5--ABC (Salaam Remy Krunk-a-Delic Party Mix)

25. Sister Carol East--Dread Natty Congo

26. Tom Waits--Heigh Ho

I also decided to set the record straight about shortbread.  Forget adding Skor bits.  Forget adding Earl Grey tea leaves.  And please (please for the love of all that is good in this world) no maple, and certainly no bacon.  While the shortbread shennanigans of my fellow radio hosts Ben and Brendan, the Kings of Dawson City, have been quite amusing to taste, there really isn't a shortbread recipe out there that can beat my Mom's utterly classic version.  Shortbread is merely butter and sugar held together by a bit of flour--a melt-in-your-mouth delight that needs nothing else.

Here are my mother's rather terse directions:

1 cup butter

1/2 cup icing sugar

2 cups flour

Cream butter and sugar

Add flour gradually

Knead 2 minutes

Roll to 1/2 inch

Bake 300 – 325 until light brown

My guess is that in between the rolling and baking, you're going to want to cut your shortbread out into pretty shapes, and using parchment paper on your cookie sheet would help prevent sticking.  In retrospect, I'm wishing that I had pressed Mom for a few more details.  Considering that she has made these (in great quantities) every Christmas for my entire life, the process has surely become a matter of instinct.

Happy baking and happy listening!

Meat & Potatoes #11

This week's music selection was a little more well-loved often-played desert-island type music...

1. TV on the Radio--Heroes
2. Iron & Wine--Resurrection Fern
3. Sufjan Stevens--Vitto's Ordination Song
4. Joanna Newsom--Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie
5. DeVotchKa--Til the End of Time
6. Angus & Julia Stone--Paper Aeroplane
7. Jenn Grant--Dreamer
8. Feist--Mushaboom
9. Bright Eyes--Another Travelin' Song
10. Dave Matthews Band--Two Step
11. Belle and Sebastian--The Blues are Still Blue
12. Hefner--I Love Only You
13. Melissa McClelland--A Girl Can Dream
14. Jeff Buckley--Hallelujah
15. Maria McKee--If Love Is A Red Dress (Hang Me In Rags)
16. Justin Rutledge--This Is War
17. Cowboy Junkies--Sweet Jane
18. Neko Case--At Last
19. Bonnie 'Prince' Billy--Take However Long You Want
20. G. Love and Special Sauce--I-76
21. Beck--Go It Alone
22. Scissor Sisters--Don't Feel Like Dancing
23. David Bowie--Heroes

I also shared a great recipe for carrot cupcakes that I found over at Epicurious.com.  I did make two small changes when I made mine.  I decided to add a 100 gram package of pecan pieces to the cupcakes (carrot cake doesn't seem like carrot cake to me unless it has nuts in it).  And I skipped the orange frosting and went for a classic cream cheese icing instead:

1 pkg brick-style cream cheese

2 tbsp buttter

splash of vanilla

2 cups icing sugar

This made a lot of icing--I have leftovers in the freezer for next time!

Adventures in Chicken Fried Steak

My boyfriend requested chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes and carrots for his birthday, and despite feeling like I was really giving him a heart attack as a present, I whipped up the Southern dinner he wanted.  It turns out that chicken fried steak doesn't involve any chicken at all--it simply means steak cooked in the style of chicken.  I used the recipe in the Fannie Farmer Cookbook for the most part; my comments are in square brackets.

1 1/2 lbs top round steak [I used two New York strip steaks]

1/4 cup plus 3 tablespoons flour

Salt and freshly ground pepper

3 tablespoons vegetable shortening [I did use shortening, but the nutitrional info is appalling; a cook friend recommended vegetable oil instead]

1 large onion, coarsely chopped

1 1/2 cups milk [this made a lot of gravy for two people; this recipe is supposed to serve four to six.  But who's going to complain about too much gravy?]

Cut the steak into 4 to 6 serving pieces [or trim the icky bits off of your NY strips like I did].  Pound 1/4 cup flour into the steaks using a meat pounder or the rim of a sturdy plate [I rocked it Yukon-style and used the butt-end of my hatchett, and it worked like a charm].  Pound in as much flour as you can until the steaks are saturated and quite thin.  Sprinkle generously with salt and pepper.  Heat the shortening in a large skillet over high heat.  Cook the steaks very quickly, about 2 to 3 minutes on each side, until golden brown.  Remove to a platter and keep warm [a plate overturned on top of another plate on the back of the stove worked great for me].  Remove all but 2 tablespoons of fat.  Add the onion and sautee, over medium heat, for about two minutes, or until soft.  Stir the remaining flour into the onion, continuing to stir, and let it cook for 2 or 3 minutes.  Slowly add the milk, constantly stirring, and cook until the gravy is thickened.  Serve with mashed potatoes and pass the gravy.