I'm Saltine, and I follow food fads

I succumbed to a novelty, and for our delayed Thanksgiving feast, made my family eat turducken. There. Admitting the problem is the first step, right?

It's ridiculous - a chicken, inside a duck, inside a turkey, all boneless, and in this case, stuffed with sausage. Tarbucket, turdbucken - I'm sure all the nicknames my family gave the beast were covering a deep unease but never let that stop you! It needed a honest try to know if it was frankenturkey or sliced bread's successor. After all, the juicy chicken, the rich duck, wrapped in the turkey - there's a lot of potential there.

The shape was impressively deceptive: aside from some fearful stitches on the side (look away, look away!) it was as smooth and shapely as any Butterball. The wings and drumsticks are still attached, so tucking it into my roaster, it was easy to believe that it was a regular turkey, although I don't usually sprinkle spicy-looking seasoning on mine.

Cooking is literally an all-day process - 6 hours at 220 degrees until the thermometer registered 165. The package gives a two hour window for completion - two hours! - which is insane, because who knows when to start the potatoes, how many appetizers will be required, how to coordinate all the sides when there's that much leeway. Indeed, climbing the last few degrees took a surprising amount of time.

Carving, however, is a cinch. Whack it in half, slice the halves. Even carving-impaired Hubby could do it.

The slices were heavy on turkey and sausage, light on chicken and duck. Flavour - hmmm - there was some, yup there really was - but wow, so not remarkable. The turkey tasted turkeyish, the sausage was a fine paste of acceptable edibility but no. Won't be going there again.

So thanks, turkducken, for your mad scientist hybridization that gave a enjoyable frisson of danger to our dinner - but we'll stick with the original.

Not your Chef Boyardee's ragu

I've been home more lately, with the weather cooling into a pleasant fall and time to let things simmer. Hubby gets a little woozy, anticipating the umami overload of slow braised food, and I love making food he enjoys.

Marcella Hazan came to mind, and her long cooked, Bolognese-style ragu, something I had never tried from 'The Classic Italian Cookbook', her treatise on the mama-made basics in the old style.

I didn't have ground beef but I did have a small pot roast that I diced, along with onion, celery and carrot, and began my all day sojourn. First the onion is sweated in a heavy Dutch oven , then the other veggies are added: but briefly, no caramelization, usually the initial objective in cooking.

Then the beef went in, cooked just until it was no longer raw looking. The wine came next; it was simmered away. Milk was evaporated off too. Finally, the tomatoes went into the pot and the heat was turned back until it only bubbled occasionally - a long, lazy afternoon transforming basic, even boring components - not an herb added! - to something utterly beyond, releasing a slow whisp of fragrance that slowly filled the kitchen, the apartment, the hallway...and brought home my Hubby and his big hug. I think the hug was because he loves me, not just because I feed him. :-)

I cooked some polenta and we ate it covered in the ragu, an earthy, gorgeous sauce. At the first forkful, it was clear that adding cheese was gilding the lily. Sensational.

The next time I made it, I used lean ground beef, doubled the recipe - anything that takes most of a day to make should be produced in bulk - and served it up over spaghetti, not bothering with parmesan. A bowl full of richly flavoured comfort... and there's another one waiting in the freezer whenever I want it. (big smile)

Fraise et Tomate

One of the lovely dinners we had in Paris was at Maceo, which was celebrating high July with a summer prixe fixe menu of strawberries and tomatoes. Chef Thierry Bourbonnais' focus on fresh and seasonal could not have come through more clearly, with luscious strawberries in every market and the first tomatoes ripe.

We started with a cold soup with the scent of berries and a delicate tomato flavour and revelled in the spacious room of pale wood. I loved being there in the pretty dress I had bought in London, earlier in our trip. Princess time!

Then we were served shrimp with berry-dyed alfalfa piled in a rosy heap with shreds of preserved lemon. With this pink swirl, it seemed perfect to be drinking the recommended rosé. Maceo is a sister restaurant to the famous Willy's Wine Bar and it's omnivorously wineophile owner, Mark Williamson, and the sommelier at Maceo did indeed seem to know his stuff. The menus on the website are a free mental vacation: http://www.maceorestaurant.com/

Our entree was lamb loin with the fat cap well crisped, served over roasted tomato slices with a pile of tiny sauteed mushrooms. Pure umami on a fork; this was Hubby's favourite course. Evening was falling, the breeze through the open window was cooler, we were enjoying ourselves and our dinner.

Always happy to eat dessert, I was excited at the plating of this one: wee dehydrated strawberries were scattered around a collar of nut tuile, which held tiny fresh berries. A quenelle of tangy creme fraiche ice cream lay along side. Too full for more dinner, I nevertheless demolished it.

We tumbled out onto the street after our leisurely meal and happily made our way to the Opera subway station, along with a strong minority of other well-dressed people - tourists, most likely, since Parisians flee the city in the summer. We were enjoying being alive and well-fed on a beautiful July evening in the City of Lights. Hubby kissed me on the platform; we laughed like we had a secret.

Flop pie

Mmmm...peaches. My second favourite fruit.

While on vacation, I had read Jeffrey Steingarten's 'The Man Who Ate Everything' and was inspired by his obsessive, perfectionist research to make traditional pie crust again. I've been using Edna Staebler's 'speedy pat-in pie crust' for a long time and although there's no top crust, a great streusel topping compensates in ways that mean no one notices the non-traditional bottom. My brother, in fact, believes it's the real thing. People don't make real pie crust much any more and it's been so long since they've tasted it that even those exposed to my mother's superior pies have apparently forgotten the unbearable lightness of crust. Great fruit and ice cream compensate for a lot.

Oh, but the crust. As much as I love peaches, and find them superlative in pie, great pie means great crust. Thinking of that lardy, flaky, tender pastry makes my mouth water, so maybe it's time to make my own again.

Steingarten consults - a soft word for the kind of obsessive pastry stalking he pursues with singleminded focus in person, via phone and fax - with Marion Cunningham, author of the Fannie Farmer Baking Book. After weeks of making pie he comes up with what he thinks is the definitive version - simple enough for an amateur, delicious enough for a gourmand.

Okay, I'm in.

After carefully reading the 8 pages of directions - not including the 6 pages on fruit fillings - and working my way through the process with strict obedience to detail - I had a non functional crust. As in, too dry, falling apart, with no structural integrity. I know to adjust baking recipes for the dry conditions in Calgary - flour is absent humidity here - but it can be hard to know how far to go - and clearly I had not gone far enough, even though I went to Steingarten's max. I wet a tea towel and spread it over my rolled dough, leaving it long enough for moisture to absorb into the crumbly crust, and managed, with the help of a scrubbed binder cover, and despite gritted teeth, to lower the two crusts into position around a peach filling.

But the proof's in the pudding, right? Unfortunately, post bake, despite an adequately browned top, the pebbly appearance turned out to continue on to the mouth feel. Can I tell you how disappointing it is to be all set up for pie nirvana and find inadequacy?

Hubby and guests - sharply warned that this was flop pie, and I didn't want to hear anything but happy comments - dutifully nod with appreciation. Okay, so it was willingingly finished in short order, but that just goes to my point about people no longer remembering good crust.

Perfect pie - still AWOL.

Bakery Breakfasts, 7th arrondissement

We never set up the dining table for breakfast in Paris. Instead, Hubby would hike the 6 flights down to our local bakery (how I love that man!) and climb back up with a bag full of my requests. He would make dark, strong coffee, I'd prep some fruit and we'd read and nibble and sip and enjoy the morning on the couch. Sunday every day!

I love pain de chocolat, and ate a good many of these, but I had an exhuberant fling with the chausson aux pomme, a flaky pastry filled with tangy apple puree. I wish it could have been a lifetime relationship, but I haven't found a Calgary version. For breakfast with fresh cherries - sublime.

Sometimes Hubby brought a goat cheese and tomato tart, which we would share, and he would have a croissant as well, and I would have pain de chocolat, each of us hoarding our favourite. There were no offers to share.

Strawberries were in season, tiny, thin-skinned, juicy and voluptuously fragrant strawberries. Strawberries like I remember eating from the garden, and finding no where else in my adulthood of hard, pink, scentless blobs from Safeway. Why does Europe still have devastatingly good strawberries while we eat tasteless styrofoam? There should be an inquiry. It's a national scandal, but most of us have forgotten what we're missing and don't complain. Well I'm complaining now. I'm mad at North American strawberries and I don't know if there's anything they can do to make it up to me - short of giving up their hard-hearted ways and becoming real strawberries again.

I topped the lightly sugared berries with a healthy dollop of creme fraiche - just to round out our food groups - and gloated that such a thing was available at the corner store.

If I could eat breakfast like this everyday, I'd stop skipping it. I'd become a devoted, enthusiastic, evangelistic breakfast eater. All hail the continental breakfast! Okay, maybe especially when eaten on the Continent.

Days of wine and cheeses

We've been home a month, but in that time we've recreated our recurrent Paris picnics several times, enjoying wonderful cheeses, baguette and wine, often a Sancerre or Muscadet, for dinner.

There were at least 4 cheese shops within three blocks of the apartment we rented, including the famous Cantin cheese dynasty, now headed by daughter Marie Anne, one of the few companies in Paris which ages cheese in their own cave to the perfection their trained noses detect. http://www.cantin.fr/

I was a little intimidated by the store: instead of the cheerful profusion in other local cheese shops, each cheese was displayed on a separate stand in the temperature controlled room, like a Cartier jewel without the glass. Uniformed staff reverently cut each piece and wrapped it in Cantin labeled paper once they deciphered an approximation of what I was asking for, my French being non-existent. I found it hard to limit my selections; after all they had four kinds of Comte, my favourite gruyere. I only bought two, along with that king of cheese, Beaufort; a stinky Brie de Meaux; and two goat cheeses, young and old. The bill: high for France but better than Calgary.

Fresh chevre, however, was not sold at Cantin - it was available at every corner grocery store, along with creme frais, Brittany butter and lardons. Avec moi! (fake French expletive) What a country!

We were lovingly savouring the last of the Beaufort on the Chunnel train to London a week later. It will be months before Beaufort is available in Calgary, which we looked forward to across the coming cold of autumn with a rueful toast.

The moveable feast to be found in the other local cheese shops looked like this:

Amongst a long list of things I hope to return to Paris for, a far more thorough exploration of local cheese is one of them. Until then, I will keep my tastebuds trained and happy with locally found Piave, Vigneron, Chevre Noir and Vintage Gouda, ready for the next visit, deo volente.

Bonjour, mon ami

Home again, home again...a month in Europe was definitely only enough time to really get a taste for great pastry. Hopefully our road leads back someday.

A month without cooking - aside from a couple of simple dinners early on when we were in a 17 century cottage with a wee kitchen - has left me out of the groove.

With jet lag temporarily at bay, we headed to the farmer's market, since foraging for a great restaurant was no longer how we were to be fed. sigh. But great ingredients like baby potatoes, ripe avocado, and sweet corn were inspiring without requiring any more than the simplest preparation.

Hubby has learned to make guacamole, so while he was concocting what tasted good to him, I steamed the potatoes and corn, and chopped a mix of herbs; the remnants from my balcony pots after a wicked hail storm, to toss with the potatoes in butter. It wasn't a fancy meal but it was freshness of summer.

Tender, gorgeously sweet corn with butter - I mean really, it only comes for such a brief time of the year, it becomes a temporary addiction. Winter memories of those exploding, luscious kernels keep my summer hope alive.