Brownies from the Pan

Why from the sides
if you can have it from the middle?

This is what happens when your mom lets you eat right out of the brownie pan.  

Brownies from scratch. 

An 8 x 8 pan to themself. 

And from the middle of the pan.

I want to go live at their house.

Arta

Pizza Crust

I am trying to give Alex 17 chances to make pizza crust. I am doing this, just for an experiment, and if any of the pizza crusts turn out, well that will be bonus for me. I have a simple recipe, which we tried. The basic method is, for a chemist (which Alex is), wake the yeast up with a little sugar. Then add flour, salt and a few spices and let the Kenmore mix master beat it for 5 minutes. Preferably add the right proportions of each ingredient.

... ready for the oven ...
experiment 1

We let first try rise over a warm vent grate and here is the final result.

As I warned you, I are worrying about process, not result. That is what let us give up on the extra cheese, since we only had about one cup of cheese in the house no matter where we looked.

Alex wanted to add extra seasonings: thyme, nassi goren spice, star anise. I begged him to wait for later the road for those additions.

Alex is prone to add ingredients of his choice.

He pulled out the chorizo sausage fro the fridge but Rebecca and I were sending up shouts of, “No, it has to be cooked first.”

He showed us words on the back of the package that said: our sausage is pre-cooked.

That took away my fear of being utterly doomed, perhaps even dying from raw sausage. I sliced the chorizo thinly.

Alex grabbed some spinach out of the fridge, which I would not have added.

I wanted to the sun dried tomatoes in oil, some roasted red peppers in a jar and some olives.

Alex didn’t anything bottled or canned.

It is fun living here.

Arta

Five Roses Pancakes

"What is nutmeg? I wonder what it tastes like."
and
"Whoops, I think we forgot the sugar."

"I learned there are two systems for measuring 

in this cookbook - imperial and metric."

"These pinch pots came in handy for cooking."

"Whoops. You didn't see that."

"I love the crisp edges of pancakes."

"Hmmm. This flour is hard to get level."

"Now that the dry ingredients are blended, it just looks all like flour."

A Note from Bonnie:

David did enjoy cooking the pancakes. His dad brought over a broom so we could clean up the flour that had flown as David experimented with how to level a liquid 2 c measuring cup with 1 1/3 cups of dry ingredients.

They each had three pancakes. I got the last two while they did the dishes.

Carving a Chicken Grandchild Style

.... thank you Save-On-Foods, for roasting this chicken ...

Rebecca often brings home chickens from the store, two that have been spiced and roasted, and that makes getting the evening meal ready quite fast.

Add some vegetables and the meal is done. Duncan likes to have someone else carve off the meat for him and no wonder. There are strings to cut that bind the legs to the body of the chicken, the chicken is slippery and scoots around when it is touched, it has to be lifted out of the container and to the cutting board, and who can tell where to cut first on the chicken. Even worse now, the chicken comes in a bag and not packaged in the stiff styrofoam container of the past. There is just something nasty about slipping it out of the bag, for the question is, slipping it out and onto what.

After we finished perfecting our crème brulee skills last week, the next sensible task for Duncan and me seemed to be to learn to carve a chicken. I haven’t had any lessons but I am not afraid of picking up a boning knife and getting the meat off of the chicken. I have the power to engage with the bird, just no skills. Now I know that U-tube is the most wonderful place to learn just about anything. Bonnie loves this way of learning for that is where David learned to make a bed. Now he tells his dad exactly which way the sheets go and how far to turn them down.

I like utube in the instance of cooking, for there is more than one way to carve a roast chicken. Duncan liked to watch Gordon Ramsey’s rendition of carving the bird. I like Mark Bower’s demonstration from the French Culinary Institute. We watched a third video, just to get the technique right and to stop the discussion of who had given us the best demonstration. One thing we do agree on is that we are going to try to do it with a carving fork, should we be so lucky to find one in the kitchen. In the final analysis, the trick is to cut the pieces and get them onto a plate so that there will be portions of the chicken for everyone. And without the meal looking as though we have just disintegrated the chicken.

Now that Duncan and I have done that homework, I am waiting until Rebecca brings home another roast chicken … or perhaps two.

Arta

Sunday and Crème Brulee

Creme Brulee Part II started with a trip out to see Matt Bower, a French cook, demo how to skip the mistakes we made last time. It is clear three areas beat us.  We beat our egg yolks for 3 minutes with a mix master -- mistake number one -- too much air.  We let our cream get too hot, mistake number two.  We didn't temper the egg yolks well enough.

Armed with all of this knowledge, we went back to the kitchen.

Having watch chefs used the vanilla bean and extol the virtues of heavy cream, Duncan started to crack eggs again, the heavy cream and vanilla by our side. We revised our original recipe so that we were making less volume, but the ingredients were about the same proportion.

We use the Aunt Bonnie rule with food – that is, if we make a mistake, it is OK and no use mourning when the whole egg gets dropped in with the separated egg whites. Either fish it out or start again – what is the cost of an egg when a person is learning to cook.

We used the method we had seen on utube, even to filling the ramekins close to the stove and pouring the hot water bath in, so that we didn’t make a mess as we carried it to the oven. Perfect crème brulee. We should have taken a picture.

And the blow torch? A big wow to the carmelized sugar on top. One of the methods had called to use a finer sugar on top of the ramekin, so I cleaned out the coffee grinder, and ground some white sugar into a finer form.   I am a good sous chef.  Duncan had seen the cook knock the sides of the ramekin to get it to spread evenly, so that worked out perfectly. Only the last two of the portions didn’t get done?

“Why?”, I asked

“My fingers are a little raw anyway and I got the blow torch too close to this hand,” he said, raising his fingers for me to see. That is fine. Seven out of nine finished beautifully.

I am calling that 100% on learning how to do creme brulee.

Arta

Creme Brulee

.... concentration is everything ...

Duncan owns one of the tools in the kitchen.

The butane torch.

Mainly used to put the sugary crust on crème brulee.

He has been wanting to make it so this after noon we got together in the kitchen and put the recipe together.

Everyone who bakes knows that the first step is finding the recipe and getting the correct ingredients in the pantry or the fridge.

That alone can put a halt to some recipes.

.... captured it!  the yolk is separated from the white

A case in point is that I have been looking for sumac for weeks, wanting to make fattoush. 

What is fattoush without that final ingredient, even though it is listed as option.

It is not optional, as attested to by those who have had the salad with sumac and without.

... which shell to use to try to pick out stray bits of shell? ....

Crème brulee is easier – some egg yolks, sugar, vanilla and whipping cream.

Maybe a double boiler and for sure – the blow torch.

Duncan was the egg separator. Six eggs gave him a chance to practice doing two things: scooping bits of shell out of the white; trying to pick up the yolk from the white when his attention got off of separating the two and he cracked the whole egg into the waiting pyrex dish.

Blame that on what you will, I have done that more times than he ever will, recovered the yolk and gone one.

“This is a disaster.”

He was right.

We added the hot cream to the creamy egg yolks too fast.

We tried a bit at a time. Mmm.

... five eggs cracked, one to go ...

Scrambled eggs in cream.

Straining the concoction wasn’t enough to save it, though we went on and baked what we could.

Even the baking was a disaster with the fat separating out on top. 

Duncan wants to use that blow torch. That, after all was the whole purpose of the experiment.

We are going to try to do this again.

So much went right, that I don’t want to give up yet.

Arta

Water in the Microwave

Steve asked what water was doing in a measuring cup in the microwave. I had warmed the two cups of water o add it to the yeast and other water that was proofing. Too bad I forgot to put in those last 2 cups. That was the reason that my batch of bread was smaller than usual.

There are so many ways to forget to get ingredients into a recipe.

I bought a jalapeno pepper expressly for the purpoase of adding it to a Thai Cucumber Salad that I have come to love. I even got the hot pepper out of the crisper and onto the counter to be cut.  I found it long after the salad was eaten, still in its position near the knife.

I have looked at brownie batter and thought, “What is going on with these ingredients; they are so thick.” The idea that the melted butter for the recipe was still in the microwave, never passed through my mind until I found it long after I had put the brownies in the oven.

I do not think missing some ingredients is a problem of age, but one of mutli-tasking. Did I put the salt in this recipe or not, I think, after 1,000 other thoughts have gone through my head.  But now I have no way to test the measuring spoon it should have gone in, for it has measured spices and oil besides.  I would not be able to tell if some salt was lingering there.

A miracle when the food is prepared just right.

 That is, if it has over 5 ingredients.

 I can get that far and still remember.

Arta

The Fire Alarm

This morning, the fire alarm went off when I was searing the boneless leg of lamb roast. Around here the fire alarm sends a rush of anxiety through the dog, at the very least. Rebecca’s fix for the piercing noise, after having to get out of bed, was to take a firm set of papers and wave them in front of the fire alarm sensor. My fix was to open all of the windows and to get the fan above the stove working, but that didn’t really work.

“That noise is the result of my first time searing a lamb roast,” was the best I could say to Steve.

“Well, I thought it was the time for the coffee,” he replied as he came up the stairs.

I have a sign on the slow cooker now.

Do not look in this pot. If you do, you will set the cooking time back one hour. 

So far, only one person has looked.

Arta

Egg and Cheese Breakfast

... cooking breakfast on my own ...

Egg and Cheese Breakfast Biscuit

by David

Instructions

1. Get out a mug, a fork, a teaspoon, a plate, and a paper towel.

2. Open the fridge and get out eggs, cheese, and margarine.

3. Get a country biscuit and put it on your plate.

4. Put 1 teaspoon of margarine in the mug and cook for 25-30 seconds.

5. Use the Ov-Glove to take out the mug and move the margarine around to cover the inside bottom half of the cup.

6. Crack an egg into the mug, fork the yolk, and then throw the shell in the compost bin.

7. Cover the mug with a paper towel and put the mug back into the microwave for 35 seconds. When done it will look jiggly but not runny. Put in for 10 second intervals until it's cooked enough.

8. While the egg cooks get a slice of cheese and put it on your plate.

9. Cut your country biscuit in half using a black-handled (sharp) knife and put your biscuit in the toaster.

10. Butter toasted biscuit and put cheese on one half of the biscuit.

11. Use the Ov-Glove to take the mug out of the microwave and use a butter knife to go around the edge of the cup to loosen the egg from the sides of the mug.

12. Drop the egg onto the buiscuit.

Enjoy with a glass of chocolate milk!

Cooking Time:  30 minutes.

Eating was the easiest thing for this recipe. The hardest bit was figuring out where everything is (e.g., teaspoon, coffee mug) and waiting (while the egg cooked - waiting is so boring). 

Checkerboard Cake - Take 1

Ta-dah!
Can you imagine how I made this cake?

Answer to Question Above

My mother is part-owner of a cake pan
made for this purpose.
Noella's mother owns the other half of the pan.

How to boil hotdogs

Three hot dogs is the right amount for me.

I am learning to cook for myself.

Today my mom asked me to watch a video on how to boil hot dogs. 

I didn't want any.

She said "This is just for practice. You don't have to eat them. You just have to help me with the recipe." 

I stopped the video I was watching about Cortex Command, and picked the shortest "how to" video (1:05 minutes). 

We watched the video and after each step, and repeated it for her. 

While we waited for the hot dogs to cook, I wrote down the steps so I could do it myself next time.. 

I did this by using the notebook and talk to text functions on my iPad. 


As the hot dogs cooked, they began to smell good. I realized I was hungry. 

I am making a set of recipe cards. I still need to add photos to this one.

While my mom did the clean up, I ate all three hot dogs. 

They were really good, even though we were out of ketchup.

I put ketchup on our grocery shopping list.

Next time I will be doing the cooking ... 
(and hopefully the eating too while 

my mom does the clean up).

A Red Salad

There was a day I would have turned up my nose at beet salad. I had to rethink that feeling when I was in London and Wyona would go to Selfridges to bring home some of their prepared deli salads. One of the tri-compartment containers was always filled with beet salad.

 ... I haven't tasted beet salad before ...
... You try it first, Dad...

I was reminded of that when I looked at the ten pound bag of beets I purchased at the Coop last week. Oh, I just didn’t purchase one, early on the week, but I purchased a second when the sale was nearly over. A few days later I began to think that maybe Kelvin and I were topped up with cooked beets. Not that salt, cracked pepper and a bit of butter doesn’t make them delightful, but I found I was eating them at noon and at supper time to get rid of what was now an over-supply. So the internet, now being a cook’s best friend, was harnessed to my advantage.

... a vegetarian delight ...

There are probably many variations on beet salad, but I grabbed this one.

It only takes a few pears (my substitution was apple pears), some feta and a few sunflower seeds. Mmm.

Delicious, and I am not just saying that because I have five more pounds of beets to eat.

I really mean it.

Arta

Crepe Batter with Soya Milk

Crepe Batter with Soy Milk
testing its viscosity

Alex has been asking me for crepes for a number of days.  On each occasion I explain my reticence to make them, for he wants them created out of eggs and soya milk.  No flour.  I ask him why the soya milk and he says it is because it is good for you.  But he is not interested in crepes made with flour.

Two days ago I told him to go out to the internet, find a recipe for crepes that take eggs and soya milk and will do the work.  He thinks that just doing it is easier than going to find a recipe, so I obliged today – an egg crepe.  The recipe was 3 eggs, 1 tablespoon of soya milk, and pour the batter into a pan that has about ¼ of an inch of oil in it.  I do this for eggs strips that go into deluxe fried rice – why not for him.  After sprinkling freshly grated cheese on the crepe, I rolled it and offered it to him.

Whoops!  That is not what he was wanting and he would show me how to make it himself.

Rebecca and I have discussed her kids in the kitchen.  We decided that it is better to experiment with eggs, maybe make a few mistakes, than to trouble ourselves about having them turn out a perfect project.

So I stood back.  Alex put one cup of soya milk in the 12 inch skillet (no oil, for that was part of what I did wrong – too much oil).  He let it boil.  Then cracked an egg in and added a lot of cheese.  Then, stir, stir, stir.  Then try to flip the product over – which was a couple of inches high – the cheese stretching out as he stirred.  He went to the strainer, trying to correct something – though he did not know what.

Finally he put it into a bowl saying it didn’t really work out as he had planned.

I tasted some.  “Mmm.  Good,"  I said.  Who wouldn’t like all of that cheese melted and soft .  What he had created was a delicious sharp cheese fondue.

... Alex rescuing the crepe batter by
putting it through a strainer...

“Do you want to finish it off,” he asked.

“Too much fat for me.  I would gain weight and weight is too hard to walk it off,” I sorrowfully replied.

Thus ends the tale of crepes made from a cup of milk, 2 cups of cheese and one egg.

Arta

Duncan’s Cook Book

Limited Edition

Duncan wants to cook.

Mostly he wants to eat cake.

Not ordinary cake, but ice-cream cake.

I have no problem with that, except making ice-cream cake is not really cooking. We are going to make an ice-cream cake and more.

I thought we could begin to cook using every category: appetizers, entrees, salads, drinks, desserts.  He took a book and began our project, numbering the pages and making a table of contents. 

Table of Contents

That was about all of the cooking he wanted to do for the day.

But in a few hours we were back at the project, trying to put together something from the ingredients we already had at hand.

We watched a utube video on the perfect banana smoothie.

Who would have known that we were to find bananas with a small brown fleck on the skin – sweeter for our drink? As well we had to dig into the backs of the cupboard to find a blender, and learn how to assemble it.

Recipe: banana, ice, mango pulp, a dash of cocoa ... yum

The only hitch in our cooking came when I got involved. I told him that it would be easy to slip the ice we had crush out of the bowl and back into the blender. Duncan was right on this count which led to me having to make an apology – since I was wrong. Bonnie has been teaching me the new model of saying “I’m sorry.” I am not that good at the form,, yet. I think I have to describe what I did wrong, say I am sorry, and ask the person how I can make restitution. And then I have to perform that act. Bonnie says that she has to look for ways to model this for David.

Unfortunately, making mistakes often, I will not have to look far. In this case I said, “I am sorry I spilled your ice on the floor. You were right and I was wrong. How can I make up for it.”

Duncan hasn’t been taught the theory of this form of saying I am sorry, but he was quick to say, “Well, I will feel better if you clean up the mess than if I do.” Later I was to understand it was just not the mess of the ice on the floor, but the mess of all of the utensils we used while making the smoothie. So ... cooking lesson number one is complete.  And restitution lesson number one has been practised.

Here's to becoming a good cook.  Cheers!

The only unhappy person is Alex, whose ice we used up. I am not going to ask if I can make making restitution in this case – at least until tomorrow when I can go to the store and pick up some ice.

Astutely, he wants to know already why I didn’t think to ask myself before I used it, “Might someone else want some ice today.”

Some questions just never enter my mind.

Arta

Persian New Year

Traditional Rice Dish

Pouria and Amir invited all of us to a celebration of the Persian New Year.

We waited until Friday when they were available to cook.

The smells of the garlic being stirred into the four eggplants that had been roasted on the BBQ began to fill the house.

Pomegranate Sauce

Persian cuisine is not fully represented in the restaurants in Calgary.

The men who were cooking assured us that we would not find food in those establishments that would match what was before us.

To the left of  the pomegranate sauce, you can see the patties made from beef, potatoes and onions over which the sauce will be drizzled.
It is true that the dishes went from one end of the table to the other.

Persian Salad a variation on the famous Greek Salad
... diced cucumbers, tomatoes and red onions ...

All of us began to ask questions about the dishes we were about to eat.

The fresh Atlantic salmon that was grilled on the BBQ and then brushed with butter infused saffron was a sight -- stacked high before us, and Amir going to get the saffron his mother had sent.

I should have taken a picture of that -- carefully treasured in a beautifully decorated box, a clear lid on the top so that we could see through to the spice that was enclosed there.

BBQ Salmon brushed with butter and saffron

Everyone knew they were feasting.

Mak had been in the kitchen, helping with the testing as the food was being prepared.

Having had a small bit of everything that was to come, he was already partly full.

The rest of us had been depending on the smells coming from the kitchen to awaken our appetites.

I do not know what else to say except that I wish you could have been here.

And even coming the next day to our house would have been fine, for all of our fridges were filled with the most delightful left-overs.

Happy Persian New Year.

Arta

I love to cook

In doing a housekeeping job on my email inbox, investigating why it fills up so quickly, I discovered my love to cook is reflected in the emails that are automatically sent to my account. In one day I saw all of the following:

Robin Hood Newsletter
Epicurious
Milk Alberta
Eagle Brand Milk Newsletter
French's Mustard
The Best of America's Test Kitchen
Kraft Recipes

... mango salsa ... enough to share ...
"easy to make if other people are in the kitchen
and I can get a chopping board in front of them"

Even if I don't make it to the kitchen, I spend the time looking at the recipes therein, fantasizing that I have the time to make them and invite people in to eat them.  Then I delete the email message and get on with my real life.

And if I am not doing that, I am cutting recipes out of the Globe and Mail Food Section, or reading the City Palate when it gets delivered to my door.

All of this spills over into the grocery store, like when I see mangoes at the Coop, 10 for $10.  Visions of mango salsa dance in my head.  Oh, life can be sweet with a handful of mangoes a jalapeno pepper, a red pepper and a sharp knife.

Arta

Oranges for Dessert

Many years ago when I was naive, lacked understanding and knowledge of the amount of work required to complete certain types of work, I had just finished eating a meal at my Aunt Arta and Uncle Kelvin's house.  Arta does not just serve a meal, she coordinates a feast.  Be in Indian food, turkey dinner, a concoction of salads (couscous, greens, etc), or other assortments of themed delights, she is a host of the culinary arts.  At the end of dinner I asked where dessert was (re-read post's first sentence now).  Arta looked at me and said there was none.  I laughed then said of course there was dessert, there was always dessert.  Arta stood up, walked to her fridge, moved her body about, then returned to the table and plunked an unpeeled orange down in front of every person at the table.  I laughed again (re-read first sentence of post again).  I asked her a second time where the REAL dessert was.  She laughed and told me that the orange was dessert, sat down, began to peel her orange.  I remember being confused because at my house growing up we always had dessert and here, in this house, there was none?  How odd.

Over the years, as I have matured, I have come to know that my mother is a baker of delightful goodies and others are cookers of delightful savoury things (caveat: my mother can cook sweet and savoury in all its delights, but she shines while desserting).  Not everyone eats dessert.  Arta is not a dessert person.  I am.  Many jokes and teasings have been made over the years by both of us about dessert, oranges and the like.

Fast-forward to 2012 as I read for my thesis.  I am working within a framework called Serious Leisure Perspective, a series of concepts developed over 40 years by a University of Calgary based sociologist, Robert Stebbins (or as my recent quantitative sociology statistics professor put it this last term, "Old Bobby Stebbins?!  He is a well-known leisure researcher?!?  Really?!?"  Yep, very much so).  Reams and reams of researchers have built on his work about serious leisure and in the 2010's more is being completed.

As I am reading one of his many books titled, Serious Leisure: A Perspective For Our Time, I come across this as a book summary:

"Let us think, for a moment, of the serious leisure perspective as resembling a serving of Bananas Foster.  Serious Leisure [the banana] is the central ingredient in this confection, which however, is greatly enhanced with the complementary ingredients of rum, salt butter, cinnamon, brown sugar, banana liqueur, and vanilla ice cream...All this prepared to perfection in a flambé pan, where the rum serves as fuel for the fire that cooks the bananas, themselves bathed, as they are, in a sauce prepared from the aforementioned ingredients.  In metaphor or in real life, the bananas alone (serious leisure) are insufficient to constitute this dessert.  Rather it needs for its completion and perfection the other ingredients...for an optimal leisure lifestyle.  Such a lifestyle is Bananas Foster, exquisitely prepared.  Serious leisure is enhanced and blended with judicious amounts of appealing [forms of] leisure...Bananas Foster, sans bananas, is just not Bananas Foster.  Every New Orleanian knows that."

As I taunt my Aunt Arta once again about oranges for dessert sans toppings, perhaps I have not grown up that much at all.  Then again, next time we are in the same city perhaps we shall share in the making of Bananas Foster, a New Orleanian dessert I have never tried.

Bananas Foster care of Joy of Desserts and More! blog:

Picture and recipe from Joy of Desserts and More! blog

Bananas Foster   

Ingredients
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1 cup dark brown sugar
8 ripe bananas, peeled and sliced lengthwise
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup banana liqueur
9 ounces dark rum

She melted the butter in a skillet, (you could also use a chafing dish), then added the brown sugar. Stir until it melts. Then in went the bananas to saute for about 3 minutes on each side. She sprinkled cinnamon and poured the alcohol over the bananas. Once the alcohol is warm (you can't light cold alcohol), carefully light it with a match or lighter. Gently tilt the flaming sauce to baste the bananas until the flames die out when all the alcohol has burned off. Serve hot immediately, over ice cream.

A Cheesecake Photo-Op

"I have a perfect coach."

Mati and I have been thinking about cheesecake recipes.

He has been making them.

I am only his coach.

Each practise gets a little better, though we didn't get in on the first tasting.

That cake went straight to his workplace for a party.

Now he made a second one for us, using all of the right methods: the cream cheese was soft and not overbeaten, the top of the cake was finished with a ganache and the cake was cooled before we cut into it. Add to that, the batter was flavoured with Wyona' special spice: Kaluha.

"I have a perfect student."

Can life be better than that?

All I had to do was provide the cheesecake spring form pan.

Arta

Pate Sable

January 2, 2010

Glen and I got together for a tart making party on Thursday, making an autumn tart, a lemon tart and a chocolate silk tart. We didn’t choose ordinary tarts, but pate sable, the French “sandy” pastry.

The recipe says that at the right temperature, this dough will roll out as smoothly as plasticine. Too warm it is like pushing a noodle uphill, too cold and it is too brittle to be malleable. We tried the second and third of the iterations, before perfecting the rolling of the crust.

The autumn tart contains apples from the trees at the lake – of course we couldn’t stop peeling them until we had enough to make two 12 inch tarts, not just one.

At the next tart making party we have 2 more scientific experiments to do. The first is to create a crust from chocolate crumbs that does not fall apart after being baked.

The second is to perfect the technique of carrying tart pans to the oven. So far it seems they have to be carried by using one’s hands on the side of the pan. To carry the tart pan to the oven with one’s hand on the bottom of the pan is to find the upper ring of the pan dangling on the elbow of your arm and the crust that has been carefully packed onto the fluted sides of the pan falling down around your feet scattered onto the floor around you.

This is a lesson that a person only has to learn once.

Hopefully.

Arta