Dad's Roast Beast & My Yorkshire Puddings

My dad had my brother and me over for dinner the other night. We all know I have a ton of chicken carcasses hanging around my freezer, right? Well, my dad seems to collect roasts of turkey and bison instead. It must be in our blood or something! He is always complaining about his lack of freezer space because he has so many roasts! In order to help him out a bit, Jem (my brother) and I went up for dinner when my SIL was out of town on a road trip.

My dad cooks his bison roasts in a rich gravy made with tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, and some red wine. It's usually very delicious, and Dad makes all the fixings, too, including roasted potatoes and veggies. For this particular meal, he asked me if I could make some Yorkshire Puddings to go with the roast beast. My mom was the Yorkshire Pudding queen when we were growing up. We had it all the time. But, to be honest, I'd never made it myself before Dad's request. I found a recipe in my copy of The Essential Baking Cookbook.

Yorkshire Puddings (makes 6), adapted slightly by me

3/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup water
2 eggs
3 tsp vegetable oil

1. In a bowl, whisk flour & salt. Make a well in the centre and whisk in the milk. In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs until nice & creamy & pale. Add to the batter & mix well. Add water & whisk until large bubbles form. Cover & refrigerate for an hour.

2. Preheat oven to 425F. Pour 1/2 tsp vegetable oil in each of 6 holes of a muffin pan. Heat the pan in the oven for a few minutes, until the oil is smoking. Beat the batter again and pour into each hole, filling about 3/4 full.3. Bake for 20 minutes, then reduce the oven to 350F and bake a further 10 minutes, until golden & puffed up. Serve immediately!Nice, eh? Here are my little puddings with my dad's lovely gravy:YUM!

I've Been Nominated for a CBA!

OH MY GOD - this little blog has been nominated for a Canadian Blog Award! I wasn't even aware of this until this morning when a long time reader of my regular blog, Sassy, left me a comment with a heads up.

So, I would love it if my readers could take a moment and follow this link to vote for my little old blog here! That would be totally cool - thank you!

And to whoever nominated me: THANK YOU!

Addendum: Once you chose a ranking, make sure you go down to the bottom of the ballot and click "vote" and you will get a confirmation.

101 Uses for a Roast Chicken #22: Chicken & Rice Soup

OK, you are going to be seeing quite a few soup recipes appearing in this series now because I have quite an impressive collection of chicken carcasses littering my freezer these days, and I need to use them up before I start becoming tempted to throw them away. Plus, I bought two more whole chickens in the States a couple of weeks back - sue me - they were 98 cents/lb!!!!! - so I really need to start utilizing this stuff. So, you might all get souped-out because, trust me, I know I will be.

I do enjoy chicken & rice soup, so this is what I decided to make with one of my carcasses the other day. And it was pretty good, I must say - way better than the canned crap.

Chicken, Rice, and Lemon Soup

1 litre chicken stock using a chicken carcass
1 cup chicken breast, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
juice of 1/2 lemon
1/4 cup long grain rice (I used jasmine as that's what I have on hand)
freshly grated garlic, to taste
salt & pepper to taste

Bring stock to a boil, and onion & carrot. Add chicken, lemon & rice. Simmer until rice is tender. Season to taste. Add garlic & simmer a few minutes. Add cilantro last. Serve.
Seriously, it was that easy!

Lunch at Rancho Chico

Well, another cross-border shopping expedition resulted in my finding unsalted butter for $1.50/lb (I bought 4), eggs for $1.56/dozen, and 1lb Tillamook medium cheddar cheese for $4.86! Isn't that ridiculous? I feel so ripped off when I shop at home. Another trip to the States is planned for the first week of December, when we'll go overnight to Spokane, WA, and do some serious shopping with a grocery run in Colville on the way back.

As usual, we went to Rancho Chico for lunch! I was surprised it was open on a Sunday.

As usual, I had the Chicken Chimi. It's just so good!

My SIL had the Seafood Chimi, which is packed with scallops, shrimp, and REAL crab meat. I've had this several times and it's excellent!

My brother had the Macho Rancho Chilli Burrito. He said it was awesome!

Yum!

Magazine Monday # 56: Latest Article from Coyote's Kitchen

Instead of providing you all with a Magazine Monday recipe today, I thought I'd share with you my latest food column, which contains two recipes! This is my piece from the Nov./Dec. issue of Bread & Molasses magazine, a publication out of Mirimachi, New Brunswick, for which I write a bi-monthly food-related article. According to my mom, the cheese ball recipe has been lost for a long time and she was pleased to have found it. Good thing I copied it down before I moved out 15 years ago! Click to enlarge. Enjoy!

Saturday Laugh

PS: I did my 50,000 words - yay!!!!

Family Dinner: Veggie Curry & Chicken Kebabs

You might recall the wonderful gift that my good blog friend and fellow foodie Palidor sent me last month. It contained a packet of Palidor's dad's own homemade curry powder, and I thought it would be great to share this with my own family, who are quite partial to curries. My SIL, Shan, suggested a veggie curry to go with some chicken kebabs she was making, so that's what we did. The results were amazing!

Here's what I did for the veggie curry.

Veggie Curry with Palidor's Dad's Curry Powder

1 onion, sliced
1" piece of ginger, peeled & grated
several cloves of garlic
3 tomatoes, diced
1 zucchini, sliced
1 red pepper, sliced
1 large carrot, sliced
a couple of cups of sliced mushrooms
1 can coconut milk
1 tbsp curry powder
cilantro

1. I sauteed the onion and ginger in some olive oil until the onions were nice & soft & translucent. I then added all the other veggies and sauteed them until they cooked down. I added the curry powder and let this all cook for a bit. The fragrance rocked! Everyone's mouths were watering and we couldn't wait to try the curry!

2. Near serving time, I added the can of coconut milk & the garlic & simmered for a few minutes until we were ready to rock 'n roll. I garnished with cilantro. I had made some nice rice to go along with our meal, too. The end result:
What beautiful colour! And it tasted awesome! Everyone was totally in love with this!

Shan made chicken kebabs by marinating chicken strips in some Greek yogurt, paprika, garlic powder, and lemon. Then she threw them on the BBQ. They were great! It was a fabulous meal all around, and we even had naan to go with it.Thank you so much, Palidor, for sharing a piece of your family with me and my family! This was a great gift!

Lunch at Frisco's Seafood & Steak House

OK, here is my latest NaNoWriMo update! The end is near - and so is my 50,000 words!

My dad gets really excited when Save-on Foods in Nelson has a case-lot sale, so we recently took another trip over there, which of course, meant another lunch out! On a whim, my dad suggested we check out Nelson's Prestige Lakeside Resort, where there is a restaurant called Frisco's Steak & Seafood House. I was game, so off we went.

Frisco's is in a lovely spot, right overlooking the water and marina located at the resort. The restaurant is quite beautiful, too, with a darker but warm ambiance and a huge gas fireplace. It was pretty busy when we got there at 12:30, but the service was excellent and the place emptied out quickly as 1:00 approached. There was a hot buffet on offer, but nothing on it appealed to us, so we perused the lunch menu and found a lot to choose from.

My dad doesn't eat seafood at all, so he went with the Beef Tender Tips with Asparagus & Portabello Sizzler. He also wanted some soup (it was a chilly day) so he ordered the French Onion Prime Rib Soup. I had a tough time choosing between the Frisco's Seafood Salad and the Frisco Burger. In the end, I went with the burger with half Caesar salad and half fries.

Both of us made great choices, except Dad wasn't keen on the soup. He said it was kind of bland, not nice & rich as a French Onion should be. But he was very impressed with his Sizzler! It came out sizzling on a cast iron platter and Dad said it was really delicious.The Frisco Burger contained beer battered halibut on a sourdough bun, topped with pickle, lettuce, tomato, red onion, and tartar sauce. It was really good, but for a signature burger it was a little bit uninspired. It wasn't particularly interesting even though it was well-prepared and tasted great. The Caesar salad, on the other hand, was fabulous! This was not your typical Caesar dressing; it definitely seemed homemade and was far better than any Caesar dressing I've had in a restaurant in ages. The fries were also good. I loved the garnishes they used on our plates; you don't get that everywhere, let me tell you!Both of us were way too full to have dessert. The prices were very reasonable given the quality of the food and the portion sizes. I had a quick peek at the dinner menu and it's very fancy and has things on it like lobster dinners, Dungeness crab dinners, and very expensive steaks. I won't be having dinner there any time soon, I can tell you that, but I'd definitely go back for lunch!

Milk & Honey Bread

This is the second recipe I've made from the most excellent book, Earth to Table.

Now, I made the recipe as printed in the book, but I realized right away that there was a flaw in it. 6 cups of water to 1 1/2 cups of liquid will simply not work. I got one loaf of bread, and although it was delicious, I needed to resolve this issue! I contacted the Random House rep I work with for the reviews and she suggested Tweeting the authors, who manage their own Twitter page. I did this and got a reply!

This is a beautiful, tasty loaf, and I'll definitely make it again.

Milk & Honey Bread, by Jeff Crump & Bettina Schormann of Earth to Table fame, recipe available on Twitter

mix together:

2 cups of flour
3 tsp salt
1 tsp instant yeast

Add:

1 1/2 cups milk
1 1/4 cups water
1/4 cup honey

- Mix until all goopy

Add: up to 4 cups of flour, until you get a nice dough

Follow these basic instructions.

And voila!Beautiful! Wonderful! Amazing! I loved the soft texture of this loaf, and the sweetness the honey gave to it!

Finally - A Toasty Torpedo!

Remember this post? Remember this ad and it's utter brilliance? Please, spend the 32 seconds it takes to watch this - it's worth it!



OK. Laughing are we? Good. Because the real Toasty Torpedo is no laughing matter!

Finally, I got to go to a Quizno's the other day. The nearest location is in Castlegar, which is about a half hour's drive from here. I'd spent the afternoon with my brother & SIL, helping them clean out the garage and making a couple of dump runs. We had to go to Castlegar to return the truck we were borrowing, so we decided on a cheap dinner at Quizno's. I of course wanted a Toasty Torpedo, so I ordered the Turkey Club one. This is it:Sigh...So unlike the picture. Well, nothing ever is, though, right? Anyway, this was puny! And not very satisfying! I came away hungry! Luckily, we went to DQ for a Blizzard afterward, so I wasn't totally starving, but still...The Toasty Torpedo was just flat out disappointing! Boo, hiss!

I still love Quizno's though; I just wouldn't order this again.

Magazine Monday #55: Glazed Balsamic Chicken

Yet again, I bring to you another Canadian Living recipe for Magazine Monday! It comes from the May 2004 issue of the magazine.

This is a really simple, delicious way to do chicken. I'm surprised I don't make it more often!

The recipe is here.

I served this with rice and the last spaghetti squash from my garden and it was total yum!

Saturday Laugh

This week's laugh comes from LOLcelebs!

Lunch at the Sunshine Cafe

It's been a while since I've had the pleasure of having lunch at Rossland's best lunch place, the Sunshine Cafe, but I got to go last week, and as usual, I was not disappointed!

I dined with my brother & SIL. Shan had the wrap special, which was Greek chicken, and the soup of the day, which was tomato & rice. The soup was so hearty she couldn't finish it all.My brother had a chicken burger with Swiss cheese and grilled onions, accompanied by the salad of the day, which was a Sweet Thai chicken pasta salad. He said it was awesome.I also opted for a chicken burger, wanting a change from my usual, which is the clubhouse sandwich. I had Swiss cheese and grilled mushrooms on my burger, and I had a side of fries because I was in a foul mood (it's amazing what a load of decent fries will do for grouchiness!). It was a great lunch!Again, the Sunshine didn't disappoint! I love this place!

Buttermilk Biscuits

Here is my latest NaNoWriMo update, including excerpt!

This is the recipe for the biscuits I made with the seafood chowder in yesterday's post. I used the technique of grating the butter with a grater, as I learned in the pastry recipe for that no-bake pumpkin pie I made around Thanksgiving last month. It worked like a charm! These biscuits were wonderful. I have no idea where I got this recipe from, but I've had it for a long time. As I mentioned yesterday, I used some lemon pepper in them for a bit of zip.

Buttermilk Biscuits

2 cups flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter
1 cup buttermilk

1. Whisk together dry ingredients. Grate the butter into the mixture & toss to combine. Add buttermilk and mix just enough to blend together. Do not overmix!

2. Roll or pat dough to desired thickness - anywhere from 1/2" - almost 1" (but be aware that the thicker you pat the dough, the longer these will take to cook through). Cut. Bake at 425F until done.

Seafood Chowder

During my last cross border shopping trip, I picked up two cans of clams for really cheap, with the intention of making clam chowder. But I also found a halibut tail end fillet on special at LOGS the other day, so I decided to make a seafood chowder.

One of my very first posts on this blog, back in January 2005, was about a seafood chowder I made when I was living in Vancouver. Vancouver is the mecca for amazing Pacific coast seafood, and I miss that about living there a lot.

I basically used the method in that post. Only, I didn't have any white wine on hand, which made a huge difference in the flavour of the broth. I also used half & half cream instead of full whipping cream.

It was a great chowder! I got enough for four meals plus I froze four more, so it was very economical.

I served the chowder with buttermilk biscuits I made with some lemon pepper. I'll post the recipe for those tomorrow.