food highlights: august

Let's take a spin through August's eating haul, shall we? Let's just say I indulged...

We went to Le Pégase for our anniversary dinner. It's an amazing French restaurant that serves high quality food and still allows you to bring your own wine. We drank a special bottle to celebrate one year of extreme tolerance of one another's quirks to the point of finding them nothing short of adorable. The young French waiter was suitably impressed by our rock star dark side of the moon wine. He asked us how our "Pink Floyd" wine was and I told him it certainly didn't taste of hallucinogens and dark thoughts. My mom got this special bottle for Matt as he is a true Floyd fanatic.

I had the venison tataki, served with crispy sweet potato, cranberries and cumin. I liked it but had food envy. (Matt always chooses the best thing on the menu by fluke or by intuition--who knows?) He had a salad of magret de canard.

For mains I had this lovely piece of turbot type fish with smoked salmon mousse, that sinfully sweet stuffed tomato with a fennel salad. Again, food envy ensued because Matt had lamb, and it was so perfectly prepared that I learned exactly why people love eating these beautiful fluffy animals. It's because they taste damn good.

Dessert time! Classic creme brulée for me.

Matt sniffing the Quebec cheese platter. His love affair with cheese will sustain him through life, just look at him!

Moving on to other delicious times...

Yoshi's daily creation: her leek and patty pan pizza at Café Petit Gateau. What a tasty place to have lunch.

 Parental units bonded over seafood at Teklenburg's. Fun times. Turns out, if you are from a small town and dating someone from the same small town, your parents will have many, many shared connections.

Authentic ramen, I mean pulled by hand and dropped into a pot of boiling water before your very eyes. A crazy huge portion for less than 10 bucks. In the Faubourg. Go.

Tasting my very first roasted loin of pork, prepared by Matt. I'm a lapsed vegetarian, remember? 

DROOOOOL

summer snapshots: food and fun

Shroom growing by tree on the shore of Kukagami lake

Fire pit on the shore of Lake Huron during the blue moon in August

Pit stop on the way to Kukagami: Smokin' Jeff''s food truck on Highway 17

Lots of hours spent tending to and contemplating the fire. I love making fires.

Matt's delicious BBQ ribs at White's Point, Manitoulin Island

Mid afternoon sangria: an ingenious idea by Rob and Sarah

The beauty of Kukagami

First Day of Spring

This weekend was delicious. Saturday greeted us with the possibility of strolling outdoors sans jacket, and strolled we did, up to Jean Talon market to get some goodies.
Can't wait for summer salads!

I'll take the kitty and the french bulldog.


I baked some amazing fresh sea bass marinated in miso. The recipe is meant for black cod, but any flaky white fish will do. Here's the recipe.
Doctored the recipe with some ginger and garlic. Pourquoi pas?



I made some more no-knead bread. This time with sunflower seeds!

Procrastinating meant I made some mini cheesecakes. What a revelation. Take your favorite cheesecake recipe, make the batter, pour into muffin papers and bake for 20 minutes. Who knew?
Start checking them after 15 minutes...mine were a little overdone. You want them to still be wobbly when you take them out of the oven.

Guess where I am going with this mess of berries?
What did you make this weekend?

epic one-pot extravaganza

So the vegan eating is going pretty well, but I was craving mussels and salmon while basking in the hot pools at the spa this weekend. There was much discussion about what I couldn't wait to do once we got home to make a food fantasy into reality. This strikes a chord as to why I think I like cooking so much. There is something amazing about imagining something then making it happen. Dreams come true kind of stuff. Yummy yummy dreams.
My sous-chef cleaned these off very well. The mussels need a good rinse so you can discard any with broken shells and the already opened ones. They're dead. Wow this is so not vegan.

Can't go wrong with some plum tomatoes and sliced garlic.

Threw some chopped celery, onions, fresh basil and oregano and that there is garlic butter. Topped the whole thing with a big glug of white wine and some tomato juice. Covered it and shoved it in the oven at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes.

Here's what we ate while it cooked:
It was my dinner companion's maiden voyage on the good ship artichoke. He described them as "interesting" a bunch of times. I think he liked them. We steamed them until tender then served them with two dressings: a vinaigrette with port wine vinegar, and melted butter mixed with a teaspoon of lime juice. I love artichokes. What other food gives you more on the plate when you're finished eating than when you began?


Next, we moved on to the salad course. Not just any old salad though. Grilled halloumi salad.


Apparently the trick is to start with a cold pan.

Finally the mussels were done. They had a nice smooth texture from being baked.

Under all those mussels was a glorious mess of fish and veg. Glorious, I tell you!



A meta-blog moment. Brought to you by wine.

i love dinner parties

Dinner parties where people come to your house and cook for you don't happen regularly, so I felt really lucky to have my friend's chef bf cook for us! Yes, I am blogging a meal I didn't make because it was just THAT GOOD.

Fillet of cod were marinated in mirin, lemon zest, ginger, garlic, and apple juice.
I cracked open a bottle of Nova Scotian port that is made with real maple syrup to impart a sweetness that is second to none.

Expertly diced fixings for the quinoa salad. Remarkably similar to one I make. Go me!


I will never ever question a chef when he directs me to put in a whole bulb's worth of garlic in roasted potatoes. No wonder I wasn't a huge fan of potatoes. They were missing garlic!

Quinoa salad. Next time I will toast the grain before boiling. Plum forgot this time.

The roasted veg also had a whole bulb of garlic in there. And fennel seeds, ooooh!

Viv wanted him to plate it all fancy and chef-life but we were too hungry to wait.



This was a super memorable meal. Thanks again V and Q!