Kara McNair - slightly submerged

>Thursday was to be the first official day of the new cook through project. In the interest of efficiency (project progress-wise) I had decided to make both an entree and an appetizer from the book. The menu was Aloo Tiki (Maurya, p113) and Five Spice-roasted Duck Breast with Shiitake Mushroom and Wilted Spinach Salad with Blackberry Balsamic Syrup (Bishop’s, p32) [I love fancy restaurant menu items - they generally give you a full ingredient list that allows you to do a decent replica at home]

I hadn’t actually picked up all the ingredients ahead of time so I stopped off at Granville Island on the way home from work to get the duck, the blackberry vinegar and the potatoes. I had gone out the day before to try to find the vinegar & duck, but was unlucky at Capers, Market Meats and 7Seas (obviously 7Seas wouldn’t have the duck, but they might have had the vinegar. They didn’t.)

However, Granville Island always has duck, and I had scoped out the online shop of Edible BC ahead of time, so I was hopeful of the blackberry vinegar. And yay! they had some in stock!

So I picked up my duck for 3 people, yukon gold potatoes vinegar and hopped back on the scooter to start preparing dinner before our friend Bill (not myBill, otherBill) arrived.

First off, the potatoes needed to be boiled in their skins until they could be mashed. That sounded time-consuming so it was first (I can’t believe I felt the need to take a picture of boiling potatoes, but that’s what ya get with mild OCD.)

[pause for a week]

Right. So… I got sidetracked & didn’t finish writing this up while it was fresh in my mind, but I do at least have more photos to post.

Right. Potatoes:

Next: Blackberry syrup (how cool is the colour of the ceramic element in this photo? I assure you that this is not the real colour of it. Sadly):

In the delightful All-Clad saucier Bill bought me as a birthday present last year :)

But do I have ground coriander? I do not. However, I do have a small mortar & pestle (gift from my brother) and coriander seeds!

[I am nothing if not resourceful. OK, I’m definitely more resourceful than I am prepared.]

One must toast/fry one’s spices in order to make them more flavourful.

Peas! (I just realized that I didn’t write up the peas story yet! Off to Granville Island and found fresh peas at the first produce place near the car. I figured “I’ll get them peas on the way out”. But when I returned, post-duck&vinegar, there was some guy there buying all the peas. He was sorting through them, but he had three large bags full of them and ended up picking up ones he had previously discarded. Pea-hoarding! I gave up & decided to go with frozen peas, but there was a bag of day-old peas at the till, so I managed to beat him to those, allowing fresh peas for me & mine.

Sear that duck:

and then stick it in the oven:

aaaaand rest:

Saute the shiitakes (which, of course, I forgot & had to send Bill back to GI for) .

and the spinach

and plate

Note the poor quality of the photo and the relative emptiness of the plate. Had I planned better I could have made the tiki aloo as a side instead of an appetizer, but then of course, we would have all starved before the duck was ready.

The food was … ok but not great. Too much seasoning on the duck (a classic failing of mine) and I don’t think I liked the aloo tiki at all (would have been better deep fried, and with a hell of a lot more salt). But still, done!

I shant be trying to do two recipes from the same book again in a single meal - instead, I shall select appropriate meal items to match the single book item.

Right, belated but at least complete. Unlike the UI design due tomorrow… :(

Looks like Nixon was right after all…

ok, how have none of the posts I’ve read so far (last 45 minutes or so) on Phoenix finding ice on mars used the title Ice, Ice, Baby?

How could China possibly launch an anti-trust probe against Microsoft? Isn’t the basis of an anti-trust complaint that someone has blocked free markets? And isn’t China kind of, oh, I don’t know.. _communist_?

(not that I think there’s anything inherently wrong with communism or socialism as economic paradigms, just that if you’re going with communism, maybe complaining about impeding capitalist market-driven realities isn’t your strongest gambit)

As mentioned, it’s Day 0 because Bill was cooking instead of me, but it’s excellent practice for me to start the posting process. I’ve spent more time in iPhoto & Flickr today than I have over the past year. I’m not a big photo type, mostly because of the amount of time required to ‘deal with’ photos, but it’s interesting that I finally have a project that I’m willing to spent that kind of time on!

Right. I don’t have the page number (and it really doesn’t matter - the book is organized alphabetically by the restaurant that submitted the recipe, with a random access index by recipe type). Here’s the recipe he made:

(the full photo set is available at this link if you’re interested, but there’s a lot of photographic cruft in there that I’m leaving out of the summary posts.)

He apparently spent 2 hours sourcing ingredients, and then I forced him to remember which bit was from where. Despite the fact that we know what each other is talking about, we don’t have the right names for places yet - I’m planning to head down there to create a photo map later this week:

• halibut was from the salmon shop (or whatever it’s called, across from oyama sausage) - they said they only had precut 8oz fillets instead of 6oz so he got a ‘big 8oz (10oz)’ fillet to cut in half)
• spot prawns were from the fishy shop at the southwest corner of the market. I’ve actually never shopped at that place and have no idea what it’s called.
• asparagus, garlic and shallots from northern of the two grocers in the middle column. Despite the two being nearly identical, I somehow always prefer the south bunch.
• after having no luck at finding dried porcinis at Choices, Granville Island or Safeway, he found them at the New Apple Farm Market on 4th (across from Safeway). One of our favourite places, and always with great prices & a surprising amount of selection of goods!
• fresh cremini (brown button :)) mushrooms from Capers
• the romano & herb gnocci is from the Italian deli at the north/centre part of the market across from Ancient Grains (Zara’s?)
• the yam gnocci is from the Italian deli at the south end across from Oyama (Duso’s?)

By the time I got home, he’d already prepped the spot prawn skewers as appetizers

as well as the prawn oil and the halibut.

(for those of you who didn’t know, I totally won the ‘guy’ lottery :))

After some fancy BBQing of the prawns, the asparagus and the halibut, it was time to plate:

In case it’s not clear, I had nothing to do with any of this.
[Also, despite appearances, no peanut butter was used in the preparation of this meal]

Are you hungry? I’m hungry:

And complimented by:

Day 1 of the cook-through starts tomorrow, with a dinner guest and some duck! Hopefully I’ll be slightly less tardy in posting.

Weird. I’ll be chuffed if I can remember filling out this meme, but here tis & my answers.

1. Father went to college
2. Father finished college
3. Mother went to college
4. Mother finished college
5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor (does relation by marriage count? I assume not)
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers (not sure I know what this means, but I can guess. And if I’m guessing right, then no.)
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home
9. Were read children’s books by a parent.
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively. (I could go either way on this. Intellectuals and ex-hippies don’t get much positive press these days, but articulate, bright students do.)
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18. (of interest, it wasn’t co-signed; it was just mine)
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs. (Scholarships sure do help, however)
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs.
16. Went to a private high school.
17. Went to summer camp.
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18.
19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels.
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18. (no, but I started buying all my own clothes when I got a job at age 15)
21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them. (nope. bought my own car at 15 - stupid, really, since I couldn’t drive it for 6 more months)
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child.
23. You and your family lived in a single-family house. Sometimes. Sometimes a townhouse.
24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home.
25. You had your own room as a child. (2 kids, different genders)
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18. (teenage girl, paid for it myself like the clothes & the car)
27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course.
28. Had your own TV in your room in high school.
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college.
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16.
31. Went on a cruise with your family.
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family.
33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up. (does the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon count? it shouldn’t - it was free)
34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family. (Never knew the numbers, but knew money was tight sometimes. Certainly didn’t feel free to play with the thermostat)

Goddamned Martians… now I have to go find a coal bin to hide in…

…

Seriously, Vancouver, WTF is up with the weather? 2 days of sun in June? Is that all we’re gonna get?

I mean come on, we can make snow, we can cause rain, surely there’s something we can shoot into the sky to make these clouds dissolve/bugger off for a while!

I’m calling it day 0-1* instead of day 1 because I was late leaving work today, my brother called from New York and Bill ended up doing the first recipe. We had a funny chat on my way home because he had assumed that we would be jointly making all the recipes, but I don’t roll that way. My projects are mine own, my preciousss….

Of course, I ended up completely backtracking on that due to unforeseen circumstance (and poor planning on my part), so I’m officially declaring the recipe he made tonight as the one in the book that I will do last, declaring the project a resounding success! The capstone. The finale rack. The… well… the OCD-driven point of closure that if I don’t do will wake me up in the middle of the night hating myself for being a failure.

Oh, perhaps you’d like to know which book. It’s this one:

A Vancouver special seemed to make sense as the first one. However, we’re also setting up a different cook-through for Bill, and planning a dinner-party based team cook-through. If’n'you’re interested, let us know.

I have oodles of photos from Day 0 that will go on the day 0 post. Also, Bill looking fetching in his new drysuit! So there’s something for everyone!

* it’s day -1 post instead of day 0 because this is more of a meta-post than an actual post about a recipe. Bill’s meal is day 0. My day 1 is Thursday - recipe TBD.

Maynards has been taken over by the Pirates of the Caribbean!