Peter the eater

I thought free bones were a thing of the past. My meat department people are helpful, but they are forbidden to mark down prices upon request. Weeks ago, a girl at a Sobey's store in Truro was fired for doing just that.

I like the island. What's the plan for a backsplash, and what happened with the floor vent?

My ice cream machine and waffle iron are used for nothing else.

I received a tiny six-pack of nutty oils a while back and I haven't really experimented with them. Some of them taste very strong when taken a drop at a time from the bottle. I'm sure they would have a major effect on the end result. I associate different lipids with different times/regions/cuisines. For example, olive oil = Mediterranean, duck fat/butter = French, sesame oil = East Asia, ghee = India/Middle East, Mazola = my childhood. And don't forget canola = low acid Canadian oil. <edited for clarity>

I haven't lived there in seven years yet those three were tops on my list. Virgil's focaccia at Past Genoa is a personal fave. Go to Luke's for dinner -- I only know his parents' excellent fare, but apparently the apple hasn't dropped far. Martin, would you agree?

I use Haddon House Liquid Smoke every once in a while. Originally, I got it for all the pork and chicken we were raising, and later on I started using it sparingly on seafood. What I like is the short list of ingredients: water, hickory smoke concentrate, and an emulsifier (polysorbate 80). It packs a ton of smokiness in each drop, so a little 5oz bottle goes a long way.

That's pretty old. I have a number of old rocks from my time in Sudbury, Ontario. One of them is a softball-sized chunk of Precambrian rock which is apparently more than 3 billion years old. I wonder if it would work as a meat tenderizer . . .

Agreed. Even better, get both knives and a stone. To use a lame automotive analogy, it's like having a fancy sports car when guests are around, and a beater pick-up for going to the dump.

Corrina, April 23rd is a good time of the year for a feast. St. Pat's and St. Andrew's almost always involve snow, at least where I live.

Ok, I'll give it a try. Daniel Webster? That's a good guess. I'm totally stumped.

That sounds serious. Is it a cluster of nuts from a Brazil nut tree that simply got picked a century ago? Does it do anything?

And here I was thinking "Cook Like a Victorian" was Old School. I knew there would be some interesting responses -- I really like Andie's burl bowl and Darienne's toucan. All that silver and iron, too. I can think of a few old houses with original stone hearths in the kitchen area. Not many people cook that way anymore.

Last weekend I inherited a cast iron popover pan from 1847. This 163-year-old pan is an intimidating piece of cookware. It's now in the hands of a fifth generation of cooks, if my kids and I can muster the courage to use it. I'm talking about a pan that was made during the Polk Administration, when Victoria's reign was in single digits, twenty years before Canada became a country. As I admire the pitted matte black exterior, the beautifully seasoned compartments, the pure functionality of monolithic iron . . . I'm not surprised it has endured all these years. I can imagine this pan surviving a house fire, or getting dug up archeologically in the far-off future, long after I'm gone. Who else has some crazy old artifact in the kitchen?

Fish Cakes Fish cakes are made all over the world in all sorts of ways. Wherever people live near water, there are recipes for fish cakes nearby. In Atlantic Canada, a fish cake is generally round, flat and fried. Salt cod or left-over haddock is a good starting point, along with mashed potatoes, onion, flour and eggs. Using milk and breadcrumbs isn’t unusual, and whatever herbs you’ve got on hand. Some fine restaurants have elevated the fish cake to an art form, and it’s a popular item at casual diners and breakfast spots. The fish cakes below are made, believe it or not, with left-over Atlantic Spanish mackerel. I like a thin crisp cake with tons of flavor, and I like to use my potato pancake approach shown here on post #150 of eGullet Recipe Cook-Off #16: Potato Pancakes. If you grate a raw potato then microwave it, it will be cooked and gooey, and it will really help hold things together. Beat an egg, add the boneless and broken mackerel pieces, mix in the potato and enough bread crumbs and flour to get a manageable moisture level. I used a cup of pumpernickel crumbs straight from the freezer – they add dark color and strong flavor. Salt and pepper, smoked paprika and cayenne powder are also added. The patties get formed and dusted with more flour, then shallow-fried in minimal veg oil. They get even flatter and thinner in the pan, then they’re racked and cooled for later. Now that I'm seeing the posted photos, I'm thinking they look more like fish cookies.

Those lobster tails, along with the fish and sides, fed four adults and three kids. The leftover Spanish mackerel will likely reappear in fish cake form. Lobster off the grill is quite different from the more common methods of steaming or boiling. The skewer is there to prevent the tail from coiling up, just like a big shrimp. The lobster shell turns an amazing rich color, like a mottled combo of pink, orange, gold and black. The flesh gets some of that barbecue flavor while it steams up inside the shell. It's saltier tasting off the grill, and the timing is more difficult. Steam or boiling water is always around 100C and it penetrates well, while an outdoor grill is much more variable. By the time the center of the tail is grilled through, the cut end with the exposed meat gets a bit overdone and a little tough. For me, steaming is still the preferred method.

If you want really, really inexpensive knives then look for Johnson-Rose online or at restaurant supply shops. I've got a whole bunch from Real Atlantic Wholesale Club. They're low-end stainless steel from China with resin handles, and although they don't hold an edge very well, they are really easy to sharpen. And if you lose one -- who cares? My 12" chef's knife was around five dollars. I take this $30 set of five when I cook away from home:

Seafood Barbecue Actually, it's a gas grill this time -- barbecue just sounds better. There's been plenty of mackerel in this topic already but it's always been the Atlantic mackerel (Scomber scombrus). Today I bought my first Atlantic Spanish mackerel (Scomberomorus maculatus). It's a little larger than what I'm used to, and it's got a green back with cool orange spots down the sides. Those are the only real differences. A breeze to clean, firm oily flesh, affordable. My fish guy said they were "pretty local" but other sources say these mackerel never come north of Cape Cod. I've got a specialized rack for cooking fish outdoors, never been used. It was a good fit for the Spanish mackerel once the head was gone. It wasn't completely necessary although I suppose it does help keep the grill clean. Lobster tails were six bucks for a two-pack at the grocery store. They got skewered and grilled, then cracked and filled with garlic butter. Mashed potatoes and steamed spinach. More garlic butter.

I'm not a fan of KFC, and yes, that thing looks obscene. It strikes me as conceptually desperate. Who knows, maybe it tastes good.

George is Patron Saint of England, Scouts, Gypsies, syphilitic people -- the list goes on. I'll be making Devils on Horseback and Chicken Wessex with Cerne Abbas Sauce for this weekend, even though it's three weeks early. Who else celebrates this mysterious Roman Soldier with feasting, and what are the details?

We usually employ a propane burner outside with a big aluminium pot. This time we had so little sap the operation was moved indoors onto the woodstove. It took most of the day to simmer off 98% of the water. If one were serious about making some volume, one would get a big stainless steel evaporator, and one would collect the sap using plastic tubing.

We collected around 10 litres of sap from a half dozen trees overnight. From the blue bags on the trees, the sap goes to a carbouy with a reliable cap in the back of an ATV, then into the cauldron at home. That last photo was supposed to show the antique Soviet weapon we carried to protect us from coyotes. It's a 20 guage shotgun that says "Made in USSR".

The harvest isn't viable without non-unionized child labour. Kidding, my son's the Habs fan, I put my Leafs toque away for next year. I hope we get some sap, the trees we tapped this time are untested.

The trees got tapped today. It's been sunny days (+5C) and chilly nights (-8C) so I'm hoping there'll be some sap on hand tomorrow. Some photos of the gear, and the mandatory thermos of hot chocolate:

Beautiful food Blether, I've got uni envy. If I want urchin, I pretty much have to harvest it myself, or go to a good local Japanese restaurant. And that's a handsome English knife.

I agree with xxchef -- there's a whole bunch of luck and alchemy at work when tapping maple trees. Yet another variable is the soil. My trees grow near white gypsum cliffs which, according to the local elders, can impart a trace of sulphur taste when the sap is concentrated. If your motives are fun, camaraderie or exercise, I say go for it. I just want to show my preschoolers that maple syrup comes from a tree, not Aunt Jemima.