Swimming Upstream

In the continuing quest to detox from a couple of stressful weeks, we tried to go with super foods last night: salmon and broccoli. The salmon was done on the George Foreman grill, an appliance that I haven't seen or used for quite some time, but it did a fantastic job- the salmon (1 inch thick steaks, not fillets) was cooked absolutely perfectly after about 6 min. Melted butter with chopped garlic and lime juice went on top after cooking. The broccoli was oven roasted at 425 for about 20 min, then tossed with olive oil and Parmesan. I'm a big fan of roasting just about any vegetable- the heat makes the outside crunchy and brings out the sugars on the inside.
Now if I can only remember what kind of salmon I'm supposed to buy. Farm-raised? Not farmed raised? Alaskan? Lake Ontario?

Soytastic

"What I Made for Dinner" has morphed into "What I Ordered for Dinner", as I had to work late most nights last week. But, no worry readers (reader): we're coming back. I'm on a soy kick after reading about the benefits and also trying to purge all the Chinese take out from my system, so I'm going with a dessert that I've had, oddly enough, at a French restaurant. Silken tofu sits quivering in a bowl, surrounded by a simple syrup flavored with ginger. The silken tofu is like a fancy panna cotta, but better for your estrogen levels. The syrup is equal parts sugar and water boiled until the sugar dissolves, with some fresh or powdered ginger thrown in. Take that, Frances Moore Lappe.

The $20 dinner party

Being cheap is stylish now, right? Everything seems to be "recession-busting" or "recession-proof". It almost makes you want to go out and spend your money on lobster tails and blow just prove them all wrong!
I didn't make lobster tails and blow for dinner, so don't get too excited. What I did do was have 4 people for dinner and accidentally made it for under $20 (not including booze and staple items). Here's the menu:

Appetizer: White bean dip. Canned beans are cheap. Dried beans are even cheaper, so if you have the time, soak them and cook. If you don't, spring for the .89 cent can of white beans. Puree in a food processor with a clove of garlic, enough olive oil to make it the consistency you want, salt, and some spices if you choose (thyme and cayenne work well). Buy a bag of pitas for $2.79, brush them with olive oil, sprinkle with salt, and toast. Serve with the dip.

Main Course: Mussels. These briny little devil are cheap, but look fancy. Plus shellfish makes people think you spent a fortune, but a bag of mussels that can feed 4 will set you back about $5. There are a million variations on how to cook them, but basically you steam them in an aromatic broth until they open. Serve with crusty bread ($3). Here's a basic recipe to start.

Salad: Watercress and spiced nuts. This is a bit of the cheat, as I had already bought the nuts in bulk, and that allowed me to get the more expensive watercress ($4 for 2 bunches). The nuts you saute in a pan with a little butter and any sweet/spicy blend you like- I used a curry powder. Melt the butter, add the nuts and spice, throw in a small amount of sweet (maple syrup, brown sugar, white sugar), and cook until they look toasty and good. Toss with the watercress and dress with olive oil and a light colored vinegar.

Dessert: We stopped at the Italian bakery on the way home and bought cannolis. This set us back $7.

And our grand total? Around $20. Plenty of money left over for your lobster tail and blow fund.

What We made for dinner

Have you ever had a night where the weather is bad (in this case a snow storm), or you went out too hard the night before, or you just don't feel like going out, but you want to have a nice meal? No? Hmm. Well, I have that quite a bit, and am fortunate enough to have friends and family that like to cook too. This past weekend it was snowing pretty hard, and Mr. What I Made for Dinner and our friend Double D decided to join forces and come up with a nice Italian meal, in order of antipasti, pasta, meat, salad and dessert. We ended up trying a couple of new recipes that were fantastic. Here's what we did:
1. Make everyone a cocktail. A must for weekend cooking.
2. Fried Olives. Double D likes blue cheese stuffed olives in his martini, and I had seen this recipe and wanted to try it. Take your olives (the big ones), stuff with blue cheese, roll in flour, egg, and breadcrumbs, in that order, and fry for 30 sec. on each side. Salty, cheesy, and fried. Mmmmm.
3. Pasta with tomatoes. Mr. What I Made for Dinner is quite good at making pasta from scratch, so I can't help you with that. I did throw a jar of tomatoes in a skillet with garlic and a couple bay leaves, and a tiny bit of cinnamon for something different and threw that on top.
3. Chicken stuffed with sausage and thyme. This was a variation on a recipe we saw for chicken stuffed with pork and sage. We didn't have the pork or the sage, but guess what we had? Cook the sausage first with an onion and some thyme, pound out the chicken breast thin, mound a little stuffing in each and secure with a couple of toothpicks. Pan fry until done, then throw a little white wine in the pan and scrap up all the jibblies. We served this with sauteed spinach.
4. Salad of watercress, pears, and candied walnuts. The walnuts are made by putting them in a skillet with a little butter, a little brown sugar, and any spice you want- I used mild curry. Dressing was just olive oil and rice vinegar.
5. Dessert: chocolate and nuts. Anything you can find in the cabinet.

This was streched out over 3 or 4 hours, so it wasn't too much food and was really relaxing. In these times of economic stress, it's good to know you can still enjoy fine dining without the state tax. Tipping yourself is optional.

What He made for dinner

The other recipient of what I made for dinner has made a New Year's resolution to cook more, so here is his entry. He has this uncanny (heh heh) way of taking any food and putting it into a skillet and coming up with something delicious, whereas I would spend 30 min. trying to think of the best possible combination of what we had before I even started. His latest skillet included chicken thighs, red lentils, chicken broth ( I think), and every frozen vegetable in the freezer, which turned out to be broccoli, peas, and shitake mushrooms. He also threw in a can of tomatoes, and I think a Turkish type of seasoning, because it had a bit of a bite to it. There may have been wine thrown in too, but maybe that open bottle on the counter was destined only for my glass- I don't know. In any case, it was delicious. Thanks, New Year's resolution!

French Canadian Magic

If you've never experienced the wondrous creation that is Poutine, you are missing out. Served in roadside shacks, bars and ski lodges in Quebec, a basic description is cheese fries with gravy, but it's so much more. It's gotten pretty trendy in the last year or so, so you'll probably see it on a bar menu at some point, but it may not be authentic. Here's the real deal, in three acts:

I. Fries. Skinny, shoestring fries. No potato wedges.

II. Cheese curd. This is difficult to find outside of Wisconsin or Upstate New York. Cheese curd is a very mild, white cheese that "squeaks" as you chew it. The beauty of the curd is that it's quite mild and it melts well without dissolving. If you can't get it, queso fresco is a decent substitute, and if you can't get that, get the mildest white cheddar or Monterrey jack you can.

III. Gravy: Canned please. In Canada, it seems to be a beef gravy with a bit of a tomato taste, but any canned gravy will work.

You can imagine how to make this: cook the fries, add the cheese, pour the gravy.

To further gild the lily, we added cut up cheese bratwurst on top, but that's not for the faint of heart. The health conscious among you should know that the justification is that football season has an ending point, and unfortunately there are not many Sundays left to sit around and eat fatty food while it gets dark at 4pm. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, I always say....

Poire au cafe

If you've never checked out Jacques Pepin's "Fast Food, My Way", you really should. Everything in this book is great, and the strange thing is, stuff that sounds kind of weird is always amazing. Case in point: coffee-poached pears. This one came about for three reasons: 1. It's January, and fruit dessert fits in with fat season. 2. I had pears that needed to be used. 3. The opening paragraph of this recipe said "if you're looking at a pot of coffee from breakfast..." and lo and behold: I was.

Here's the details: Peel 2 pears and cut into quarters. Put in a saucepan with a cup of old coffee, a little less than a 1/4c. of brown sugar, a cap of vanilla, and some booze. He called for port, but I didn't have any, so I used Creme de Noyaux, which is a bottle from the way back of the liquor cabinet that tastes like almonds. Poach for 10 min, or until the pears are soft. He called for thickening the remaining sauce, but I did'nt feel like it. I served with sliced almonds, chocolate chips, and a little yogurt, but if I'd had ice cream I would have used that. It's pretty deceptive: dark, dark brown pears look a little unappetizing, but the bitterness of the coffee and the sweet of the pears is really nice. If I'd taken the time to pretty it up it would actually look quite elegant.
Plus my acupuncturist just told me that pears are good for the lungs and the dry, hacking coughs everyone seems to be having this time of year. Health food! Who knew?