Make yourself a dang quesadilla!

Quesadillas are a great, simple meal that I often forget to make. Tortilla shells just look so plain and white sitting there that they seem like a long way from appetizing. I'm fact, they're very simple—even Napoleon knows how—and tasty and, just as importantly, flexible enough that you can fill them with all kinds of leftovers. Refried beans (which I attempt to make—with debatable success—in the video below) are growing more important in my mind as a useful staple to have around: they're cheap, flavorful, healthy and store in the pantry forever. They are also substantial enough to be filling while adding an almost creamy texture that's not actually butterfat. You'll also see in the video that, with everything else going on in the quesadilla, two chicken breasts provide enough meat for the whole family.

• This is the recipe for the ones I make in the video, but you could replace virtually any element in his recipe with another.
• Roast some vegetables, in this case peppers and onions. Lightly toss cut veggies in oil and roast for 45 mins at 350. (I know this looks like more than a "30 minute meal" when you add the roasting time, but honestly, it takes almost nothing to start; and, frankly, if you're only ever beginning to think about eating 30 minutes before you want to be sitting down to eat, you're pretty much never going to cook well)
• Chop up some meat into smallish bits.
• Grate some cheese
• Open a can of refried beans (or try to make your own at the last minute ;-)

Peel the peppers and chop them into pieces about as large as the chicken pieces (think stir-fry sizes)
Lay the tortilla shells in a large pan at medium heat or just below. Spread a large spoonful of the beans on half of the shell before it gets too hot to touch (or do this step on a cutting board before putting the shell in the pan). Add some of the chicken/veggie mixture to the bean-spread side and then sprinkle cheese over the whole shell. Let the shell brown on the back and wait about 30 seconds to let the cheese melt. Flip the cheese-only side over top of the beans/veggies/meat-side and give it all a bit of a press with the back of your spatula/lifter. Flip once to check the other side for done-ness and transfer to a cutting board. Cut into thirds and serve with salsa and sour cream (or guacamole if you've got it on hand.)

Fine!

Miss Manners?

This being American Thanksgiving, there are lots of interesting articles on food-related questions. One of the best sites, believe it or not, is the venerable New York Times. The Dining section has a great series of short videos presenting their take on the classic turkey and stuffing dilemmas.

What caught my eye this morning was a post on the Motherlode blog about teaching children table manners in anticipation of visiting family and being under that particular kind of scrutiny that can only be found amongst parents at family gatherings. The post is clever and true enough, but the comments to follow were what fascinated me most.

As you can imagine, many people chimed in with horror stories about "the youth of today" and the general decline in manners that is often invoked. One woman posted near the top of the comments how she had been "shamed" by the parent of a childhood friend for the way she held her utensils at dinner, and that from that moment had vowed to teach her children properly to avoid a similar fate for them.

But then a whole host of critics began to criticize the mother from the story for being "cruel" and "presumptuous" enough to "impose her values" of "proper" manners on a child, and a visiting child at that.

Now, I don't want to make too much of this, but in a way, you can see the dissolution of society written right into the comments on this tiny corner of the internet. That is, our society seems to be at this inflection point where we lament the loss of a particular standard, while simultaneously acknowledging that we have lost the nerve to even maintain those standards. I wrote the following as a comment to the blog, but I'm not sure if it's up yet.

==================

I'm also raising four children under 12 and table manners are an important daily conversation. What makes it hard to persist is the feeling that you're "majoring on the minors" which is to say, putting over-emphasis on things that don't really matter. Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to teach children habits of any sort without traveling well-past the boundary of what is seen today as bald-faced coercion.

Witness the comments here that, on one hand, lament the loss of social niceties, but pounce on someone who recounts a story of being forced (or shamed, or whatever you want to call being made to conform to a structure not of your own immediate choosing) to follow "proper" table manners. Even the notion that there is any universal measure of propriety is challenged, so the very foundation of the system of passing on cultural values is undermined. Whose values? Yours? Mine? The kids'? Who's to say.

No parent or teacher who has ever taught children cursive script, or to chew with their mouths closed, or to practice an instrument long enough to master it has ever been able to stay entirely on the "friendly" side. One of the greatest costs of parenting is the realization that you will occasionally have to seem like a monster in order to teach your children well. The Bible points out well enough that "no one likes discipline"; what it's taken me a while to realize is that no one really likes meting it out either.

Farmer sausage, garlic mashed potatoes and glazed carrots.

Speaking of garlic, it plays a pretty big role in tonight's dinner. I saw that garlic farmer sausage was what was thawed on the counter when I got home and that started the wheels turning. We usually do Helmi's perogies (cottage cheese only, if you please) with farmer sausage, but tonight the "garlic" label seemed to be calling out for a change. I had wanted to try a recipe idea that I had read about in Cooks Illustrated about rinsing potatoes halfway through cooking to get them less gluey and tonight seemed like as good a time as any. I also got a new potato ricer from Ikea that I haven't used much yet, so garlic mashed potatoes it is.

• Start the farmer sausage on a pan in the oven at about 350-400, add a garlic bulb (top cut, drizzled with olive oil and wrapped in foil) for roasting
• Leave the jackets on the potatoes and just cut them into about golf-ball sized pieces.
• Set some water boiling and steam the potatoes for about ten minutes.
• Cut up some carrots into finger-length pieces.
• At ten minutes rinse the potatoes at the sink and return to the steamer, adding the carrots.
• Set the timer for 15 minutes and let carrots and potatoes continue to steam.
• Remove the steamer with the potatoes and cover with a clean cloth to absorb steam
• Add carrots to the empty steamer base pot with some butter, honey (or Rogers Golden!), a splash of lemon juice and salt.
• Let the liquid reduce while getting the garlic out of the oven (should roast for about 45 mins)
• Set the carrots aside and begin "ricing" the potatoes and roasted garlic
• Add butter, cream, milk, cheese, spices, whatever you want to your potatoes as you stir/mash them over medium heat
• Done!

We ended up eating most of the potatoes, but left-over mashed potatoes work pretty well in soups as leftovers. They can give body to a soup and add a creamy consistency in a way that doesn't need to be quite as rich as achieving the same with cream or a flour-based roux.

OK, is "roux" too fancy for this blog—let me know and I'll tone it down ;-)

Mennonites and garlic?

To my recollection, garlic was not really a part of Mennonite food culture—at least as it developed in the Ukraine. My grandma cooked with plenty of onions, but that distinctive flavour of garlic was pretty rare. I guess we had garlic bread sometimes and I remember that the spice cupboard had a jar of garlic salt (that lasted at least a decade), but I don't think we ever cooked with fresh garlic. If any of you are food anthropologists I'd be interested to know your thoughts. When did garlic first make its way into your cooking? Is there a "garlic generation gap" of sorts between those who grew up second or third generation? Or maybe I'm out to lunch here and garlic played a bigger role in Mennonite food than I think.

Coffee Break, Part 2

If you're hitting this page first thing Monday morning, sit back and take a quick course on high end coffee via the most exotic method I've ever seen. Thanks Kristina and Johannes (and Liz & Jordan) for a great evening.

Simple, Frenchy-style Chicken Drumsticks

Cooking drumsticks is a great weeknight dinner option—especially if your wife has set them out and thawed for you when you get home (thanks, Babe!) They're cheaper, and better tasting than chicken breasts (more fat, more flavour every time) and they're almost impossible to overcook and dry out like chicken breasts usually end up being. That makes drumsticks (and thighs) perfect for nights when you might not want to attend to every dish all evening.

Of course, you can shake 'n bake, but really, it's mostly a gloppy mess for not much of an increase in flavour in my books. A quick toss in olive oil with a generous salting and some pepper will get you all the flavour you need. I also found some baby potatoes and those baby carrots and an onion to add and pretty much threw them all in the oven on a baking sheet for an hour at 350. I'll flip them halfway through, but even that's probably unnecessary.

Though you could certainly eat it straight like this, I suddenly thought about making a bit of a french-style (I think) sauce. So I threw the whole works in a pan with a little butter, a few fresh herbs (thyme) and gave everything a bit of browning. With the pan nice and hot I decided to add some cream, but on the way found some leftover white wine. Not that I want to advocate "cooking with sin" as my Mennonite Grandma once scolded her daughter (the full story on that quote is on my cousin's blog).The wine gives "a bit of acidity' as they say on cooking shows and the cream is awesome because it's just, well, cream. I let the liquids reduce somewhat to form more of a saucy consistency and served it up.

You've gotta love the kids' enthusiasm at the end of the video!

Butternut Squash Soup (with secret ingredient!)

This is one of my favourite soups, partly because of the way it starts with a weird gourd that I would pretty much have never thought was edible. Also, of course, because it has this luxurious texture and a taste that's almost the perfect distillation of a warm, cozy gathering on a cool autumn evening.



Fall vegetables are the core of a soup like this so squash, carrots, onion and garlic get prepped first.

• Cut and core the squash chopping into 2-inch chunks 
• Cut the onion into strips, because the little diced ones are a real hassle to pick up later with the tongs. 
• Peel and cut the carrots into 2-inch chunks, splitting the larger end in half (I used four long carrots for this) 
• Cut the top off a bulb of garlic, drizzle with oil and wrap in foil The key to much of the flavor in the soup is the roasting process that comes next. Toss the veggies in a bit of olive oil and roast at 350/400 for about an hour or until everything's soft (you should be able to push a paring knife easily through a well-roasted carrot). 

Meanwhile... clean up a bit. Once the roasting is close to done:

• Bring a litre of chicken broth to a boil and add a bay leaf 
• Peel the skin off the squash and transfer the veggies to the pot 
• Squeeze the roasted garlic out into the pot and make a disgusting noise while you do so to irritate your wife (or get your kids to help with the sound effects) 
• Add a cup or so of cream (and/or egg nog, if you dare. I'd never used egg nog before, but it worked out great!) 
• Simmer until the veggies are really soft—like, 20 minutes or maybe 30 while you set the table and get out the blender. 
• Pour the soup into a large bowl and ladle about half the mixture into the blender. USE THE LID OF THE BLENDER! This is hot soup and the thickness can easily create viscous bubbles that will splash molten squash purée on you and everything else in the kitchen (this is not a hypothetical scenario) 
• Purée the mix until it's smooth, adding as much hot water as it takes to get it all moving. 
• Pour the first half back into the (cleaned) original pot and repeat. Add salt, pepper, sugar, syrup or whatever else you want to taste. 

Serve it up with fresh bread and just think what a great meal can come from such funny looking foods.

Dedicated to Andi Murray who is, in part, responsible for the origins of this blog.

Coffee break

Coffee certainly wasn't invented by Mennonites, but I don't know many who don't enjoy it at some level. For some guys, however, coffee is something that women have to make because somehow it seems too complicated and fraught with potential for spectacular failure—like operating a washing machine, it's just something many guys are intimidated by and imagine that it must take years of practice. Remember Michael Keaton in Mr. Mom? I think this scene is emblazoned on my memory so I'll indulge myself and include it here.

Jack Versus the Appliances
Mr. Mom — MOVIECLIPS.com

But back to coffee. I know this french press preparation doesn't rival the complicated social ritual of Yerba Mate with it's bombillias and guampas and shared saliva (there's another post, but not from me), but it is a ritual nonetheless. You eventually get into a rhythm:

• Stagger out of bed before the kids get up and start the kettle
• Either set the whistle and go back to bed until the boiling kettle wakes you up again, or attend to other morning necessities; either way, when you get back the water's ready
• Turn off the heat to let the water come off the boil
• Measure out the grounds or grind your own (yes, purists, I do grind my own beans some mornings)
• Put your bagel in the toaster
• By the time your toast is ready, your coffee should have steeped
• Bring it all together in front of your favourite newspaper/website

Especially these days, all the various methods of coffee prep have their own cult-like defenders and detractors, but french press has gone form being a quirky "European" treat to being our mainstay morning appliance since our fancy coffee maker burned out six or seven years ago. We're going to visit Kristina and Johannes next week who have serious barista chops, and the last time we were there he made us coffe that was mind-altering in both preparation and execution. I'll see if I can get it on camera.

So, what do you use to make coffee? Do you drink it black like my father-in-law taught his daughter, who taught me —"You don't want to inconvenience people, asking for cream and sugar, yet!" Are you a Postum drinker? A Coffee Mate man?

Dinner tonight was makeshift again—leftovers, but not just cold things from the fridge. My wife's home again (huzzah!) so she was out picking up kids and stopped to get some fresh bread; and let me say, decent fresh bread can make almost any meal taste better. Especially a loaf of French bread is great on a Friday or Thursday evening because it's really only good that day, but then the crusty bits can be used for French toast Sunday morning—nice.

At home I started the water boiling, which you might as well do in advance, because it's not like it's going to go bad. Make a big pot of water and use more salt than you think you should. Anthony Sedlak at a Lepp Farms cooking night (my birthday present) said that pasta water should be as salty as sea-water! That's a lot more than I was used to, but it does give the pasta more flavour. A lid also makes a huge difference in the speed of boiling water (um, at least I think it does...I sense a mythbusters post coming on—maybe I'll test that sometime). I usually use cold water because it's fresher than tanked hot water, but certainly hot water will boil faster if you're in a pinch.

So spaghetti is the pasta option for the evening and I always used to be unsure how much pasta to use. My rule now for the whole family is as much as I can hold in one hand with my middle finger touching my thumb. Now, that depends on the size of your family (not to mention your hands, Leland Klassen), but it's a helpful guide. If you're really worried about the sauce:pasta ratio, maybe keep the sauce and pasta separate until you serve it up (that debate, by the way, is a perennial one in our house with me being a "mixer" and my wife being a "separator"). A bit of vegetable oil in the water helps keep the pasta from sticking together, but I still think fanning the pasta out from the centre when it first goes in the boiling water (like pick-up sticks!) helps a lot too. Fettuccini/linguini however, almost never works perfectly for me and I always end up burning my fingers trying to separate stuck together strands—suggestions?

The sauce for this was a real hodge-podge. I had half of jar of some Costco spaghetti sauce—not enough for everyone. I also had a small can of tomato paste (always good to have on hand), which I added to the sauce, but which made the sauce too thick. I could thin it with water, or a real tomato, NOT ketchup, or cream and, in the end I used all of those as well as an old jar of pesto that I found at the back of the fridge. We also had some cooked chicken that I browned in a bit in olive oil with a chopped onion and eventually added to the sauce. The chicken is, well, chicken, but I always like adding fried, chopped onion for its toothsome texture (and is there a better food word than "toothsome"). Finally I threw in a half bulb of garlic that I had roasted in the morning (while my dad helped me fix our fireplace—thanks!) that I originally thought I would use for a soup that never happened in the end.

Maybe tomorrow for Faspa.

The Skinny...

This picture is a bit racy—my mom even cautioned me against posting it—but I think it's amazing. For one, I can't believe I've never seen a chicken photographed this way before. It appeared at the head of a fascinating article in the New York Times dining section about the foodie crush certain (mostly male) chefs have developed for chicken skin. For example:

Nate Gutierrez, the chef and owner of Nate’s Taco Truck and Nate’s Taco Truck Stop in Richmond, Va., could not stop snacking on the skin left over from his roast chickens. So about six months ago, he decided to make the skin crisp on the flattop and offer it in a taco. The chicken-skin tacos sell out whenever they are on the menu.

Wow! So do you eat chicken skin? I know it's become very health-conscious not to, but my daughter absolutely loves it and I love that she does. Is it a texture thing, or does it have it's own special flavour? Does anyone have family dining traditions or personal preferences for this or any other chicken parts?
 
I was going to add that I also have a thing for necks and thighs, but I wouldn't want to cross the line on a Mennonite blog ;-)

Hey, big news! For the first time in the short life of this blog we have a second contributor—my brother, Clayton, better known to some as Yexter (you'll have to ask D. Kropp—another Menno cooker guy—for the story behind that name sometime). He's a firefighter who usually regales us all at Sunday lunch with tales of bravery, rescue, and general derring-do, but occasionally his exploits are of the culinary sort; he still deals with intense heat and flames, but in a less-destructive mode.

Clayton's also a former Earl's line chef from days of yore and he puts those skills to good use when he's not dousing "fully-engulfed structures" or falling in manure pits (another story, another post ;-). So without further ado (and refraining from all snarky comments about how much free time/resources firefighters seem to have), here is the recipe for Grilled Reubens.

P.S. the recipe is built right into the video—awesome! (and why am I surprised after all these years to have him outdo me again, given the first possible opportunity *sigh* ;-)

Breakfast this morning was a two-stage affair. Half the kids had a Pro-D day and I did too, so the morning seemed a little more relaxed. Cue porridge.

I have a distinct memory of never liking oatmeal or cream of wheat when I was a kid though I did have a brief but torrid affair with Red River Cereal—think warm, mushy Stoned Wheat Thins with brown sugar—after visiting Young Life's Malibu camp with Northview's Roaring 20's group one summer (I even bought a Red River T-shirt!) When my kids arrived I came to love oatmeal as a quick meal for toddlers, but it still never seemed appetizing to me until I started putting raisins in it. Preferably they go in early enough to get nice and juicy (like in plummi moos), though I know some people HATE "re-plumped" raisins.

The recipe here is:

• Boil some water (Element on Max.)
• Add instant oatmeal and raisins (turn down to less than half)
• Wait until it looks ready, stir if it looks like it needs it, add more of either water or oatmeal if it looks like one is lacking—really, this is not difficult.
• Serve

It's actually hard to imagine an easier thing to make. How much of each you ask? Just work it out. If it looks like oatmeal and it's been on the stovetop for 5 minutes it's almost certainly ready.

The interesting part is what you put on oatmeal, so that's what's in the video below.




So after this I went off to school for second breakfast where I met some of the gang of Mennonite men (and women) who I hope will be sharing and cooking for you all here in the coming weeks. I got quite the ribbing at this breakfast Pro-D for starting a blog about cooking, but I bet you'll see a few of them on here someday.

Sorry, no dinner vlog tonight as I went off to my Mom and Dad's with the kids and enjoyed a great meal together with them. It was a bit of a mix of old and new with the centrepiece being the classic Mennonite farmer sausage "imported" from Waldheim, SK (or is it Winkler?) courtesy of the trunk of Bob and Ruth Boughen's Buick. They're also a great local dealer for "cracklings" or yreva (or, as the blogger from Planet Borscht called them, Jreewe—weird). We can talk about cracklings some other time, but as far as I'm concerned, there's no sausage like the stuff from Bob and Ruth. The "Mennonite" farmer sausage that you get at the supermarket just pales in comparison. Store-bought sausage is just too ... smooth. For me it has to be basically crumbling when the casing's off.

So, what do you think? Do you have a preferred line on that most essential of Menno fare: farmer sausage? Can Rempel's go up against Funk's (from the old days)? Does Neufeld Farms even do their own sausage? Has Lepp's elbowed its way in over the last year or do you >gasp!< make your own? And do you peel the casing off of sausage or is that just too much hassle?

So tonight's dinner was a classic: a no-advance-planning, lets-see-what's-in-the-fridge, maybe-we-should-just-order-pizza kind of dinner. But there was a bag that I thought was leftover potatoes that turned out to be meat. And there were fresh-ish buns (from the Gesundheit Bakery no less, yet), and there was a can of beef broth. Sounds to me like beef dip.

Recipe:

• Preheat the pan to medium (half as far as the dial goes - do not "turn it to eleven", Nigel Tufnel!)
• Cut up an onion into strips, not tiny little pieces (use a normal, supermarket sized onion—smaller than a grapefruit, bigger than a golf ball)
• Put butter in your hot pan (less butter than a golfball, but not by much)
• Stir to cover the onions with butter and let cook 5-8 minutes (or until "golden brown" as they say on the cooking shows ;-)

Meanwhile...

• Cut the roast beef up into the thinnest slices you can manage, but don't worry too much about size—you're not competing with Arby's here yet.
• Once the onions are brownish and softish, add the meat—stir again.
• Once the pan recovers some of the heat it lost from the meat, add a can or two of beef broth.
• Salt and pepper—or just do your own later if your kids like it milder.
• Add a splash of soy sauce (maybe 1/4 of a shot glass) and/or Worcestershire if you have either on hand.
• Turn up the heat a bit to speed the boiling down of the broth. If you like dipping things (mmm, mushy bread—someday I'll do a whole series on mushy bread recipes), add more broth to make it a little juicier.

Meanwhile...

• Toast the buns, get the kids to set the table, open a can of veggies, make a salad ... or don't do any of these things.

Finally...

• Strain the beef/onion/broth mix into a bowl. Put the beef back into the pan to keep it warm. Pour the broth into small bowls. Add a slice of cheese or put mayo or butter on the buns if your kids are too skinny—not so much if they're not.
•  Enjoy, cause that's a MANwich.

In the beginning...

So, it seems that Mennonite girls can cook—as if anyone really disputed that. What's really up for grabs, though, is whether the fellas can contribute anything in the culinary department. I know, most people imagine that the most any Mennonite man ever did to prepare for supper was to comb the chaff out of his beard, but the times are a-changin'. As Gareth Brandt pointed out in a recent blog post, men (bearded or otherwise) often play more domestic roles these days and frequently find themselves cooking on a typical weeknight—and it usually ain't BBQ. But what do guys make for dinner beyond KD, or PB&J, or BYOB (you know, bearnaise sauce) or any other food acronym they can throw at a crabby family come 6:00 on a Tuesday?

Well, that's what this blog is all about. I'll try to get things started with a recipe and maybe a video if I get the dishes done before falling asleep on the couch. Feel free to contribute a comment or a recipe or just tear out what little hair remains—metaphorically, of course—and vent about what those brats said about the dinner you slaved over for them while they were blowing out their brains on the PS3. There, there ... you'll be just fine. You're among friends here.