Okanagancook

Lovely meals from everyone over the past week. Interesting to see how the meal components are changing with the season, especially for us northern folk.

We made a Thomas Keller themed birthday meal. Unfortunately I missed taking pictures of a couple of courses, duh. The menu was paired with wines and this is the first time we have done a multi course meal and researched the wines in our cellar to pair with the courses. This worked out super well and we all commented on how well they went together. I have pictures of the scallops, the potato pave in the pan, the version before frying and the plated main. The pave took two of us 1 1/2 hours to assemble! The Crisps took my friend 2 hours to make and the filling turned out too runny so not sure what happened there. I went to 9 stores in Penticton looking for Brioche to make the croutons then forgot to put them on the salad, duh again. That Blue Cheese Dressing is to die for. If you like that kind of dressing it's a must make. And that Horseradish Cream! Oh, if you like horseradish it's amazingly good. The venison tenderloins were a gift from a hunter friend. There were two of them, not the same size. So I meat glued them together to get six nice thick steaks. He has you marinate the peppercorns in oil that has been brought to a boil. It made them easier to crush. So many components to the meal, for example, the pork belly had been sous vide and frozen so I just had to brown them as well as the flat breads and cornets which were made the week before and put in the freezer. I don't think I could have made everything on the same day. All in all, it was an interesting exercise and I learned a lot about being organized and patient, very patient. I just wish I had taken pictures of everything. Just not in practice. Next time. MENU French Laundry Cornets Parmigiano-Reggiano Crisps with Goat Cheese Mousse Flatbreads with Tapenade Reserve Brut 2005 Blue Mountain Caramelized Sea Scallops with Braised Pork Belly Culmina SAIGNÉE VINTAGE 2014 Peppercorn Crusted Venison Tenderloin Horseradish Cream Potato Pave Honey-Glazed Cipollini Onions Grilled Endive 20 Mille Bordeaux Superieur 2007 The Dead Arm, 2006 d’Arenberg Iceberg Lettuce Slices Oven Roasted Tomatoes, Brioche Croutons, Lardons Blue Cheese Buttermilk Dressing Roquefortissime, 2014 Linzer Cookies Vanilla Ice Cream El Noble Villard Botrytised Sauvignon Blanc 2006 Stoneboat Verglas 2008

stckciv, I can't seem to get the spreadsheet to attach so if you would like to email me at phschnurr@shaw.ca with your personal email I will send it to you. Are you Mac or Microsoft? cheers

Beautiful looking kitchen Unpopular Poet. Well done.

Baron, to add my two cents worth: stunning and thoughtful food! Thanks for sharing.

Up here in the far north our new friends who moved here from Winnipeg always celebrate American Thanksgiving so theyt had us over for a delicious southwest flavoured turkey; cornbread/Andouille sausage stuffing; green beans in butter; mashed potatoes with bacon and grated cheese on top with some herbs mixed in; a delicious slaw which had vanilla and honey in the dressing along with red cabbage, apple, celery and raisins; and gravy with chipotle and cream in it. Everything went together so well. I think she got the recipes from the Food Network magazine and the salad was from Michael Smith. I brought the turkey stock which they swooned over. It was very concentrated and was made from roasted turkey necks, herbs, carrot, onion, celery all cooked on the stove for two days then reduced to 6 cups. We drank numerous bottles of local red wines and finished off with "chocolate bourbon balls" watching the last football game of the day. This is going to be a tradition now. So, we get two big meals, one in October and one in November, brilliant. On the subject of turkeys I think if you buy a fresh turkey the likelihood of success is much greater.. They just seem juicier and definitely brining it is the way to go also.

With temperatures promised to drop to -10C this week, DH has moved the wine outside to cold stabilize it. Basically it is a method of clarifying the wine. Tartaric acid is the target for cold stabilization and will precipitate out at this low temperature. You might have experienced tartaric acid crystals at the bottom of your glass of wine. Not attractive. For more information on cold stabilization, Wikipedia has some nice information. Just having a glass of last year's pinot gris. Quite nice now. Good acidity and crystal clear without, well, crystals at the bottom. cheers

Here is a link to the top places in Vancouver, Canada. That's all I know. You could contact them and see if they are in need. Vancouver is a very expensive place to live by the way. Good luck. http://www.insidevancouver.ca/2011/02/12/top-5-vancouver-chocolatiers-boutique-chocolate-shops/

Scuba......love those nice thick potato slices. Probably kinda like a baked potato in the middle being so thick but with the nice crust, on two sides no less! And the tomato jam was a wonderful addition.

Ann_T. your crust is truly swoon-worthy! The best part of the pizza IMO.

Are those shrimp chips on the front left? Love shrimp chips when done right.

I think constant stirring also helps to get the polenta creamy.

I cooked a brined spatchcocked turkey for our Canadian Thanksgiving. It was around 16 pounds, a fresh turkey. I did an equilibrium brine using a 2% solution: Weigh the bird and the water to cover said bird. Take 2% of that weight and that is the amount of salt to use. Brine for 24 hours. That's my go to method for all poultry and pork. It doesn't get overly salt using this method. Drawback: fridge space.

Thanks for the great description. Sadly I only have access to frozen rabbits, well, unless we start a farm....humm may not be such a bad idea once our dog has gone to doggie heaven. I am going to give it a try when the weather isn't so unseasonable and I can baby sit the rabbit. I think it was on Mind of a Chef a couple of weeks ago they did a whole rabbit on a spit. Tied on like a chicken and not spatchcocked like the one you did.

Just curious as to how long it took the rabbit to cook on the grill. I was thinking of preparing one then up came your photo. What temperature does one cook a rabbit to? All you meals look amazing. Cheers and thank you so much for sharing them with us!

Yes, you have too much vacuum. You will have to play around with the settings. First I would reduce the settings you were using to half, then try again. You don't want the liquid to boil up, but just before it does that. Also depends on how hard a vacuum you need. When I package sauces, I just want to exclude most of the air for freezing but if I am sous viding a stew or solid pieces of meat I want a little stronger seal so the bag doesn't float. The liquids need to be cold also. So, just experiment unless someone else has something more definitive.

I cooked a spatchcock turkey for our Canadian Thanksgiving, also my first time with a turkey. It was around 15 lbs and the thighs were done before the breast meat! It did not take as long as I thought, so my advice is to check it often. I brined it first. Comments around the table: "this is the best turkey I have ever eaten"

So simple but so good! Looks like Spanish chorizo. What kind of rice did you use?

Time to update. The sulfur kills wild yeasts but the wine yeast that we add is resistant to sulfur and thrives. Actually there are thousands of strains of grape yeasts. Each one produces different aromatic compounds as they use the grape sugars for energy. This obviously produces different tastes in the final wine product. Many winemakers have their favourite yeasts which they use on various grape varieties. All very scientific. Deryn, I'm glad you found our little wine making operation interesting. It is a 4 1/2 hour drive to Nelson. My brother lives there. He retired from Toronto a couple of years ago and loves it. Nelson has pretty mild winters also. Kootenay Lake provides the warmth in winter as does Lake Okanagan for us. Your son sounds like he just has fun with this 'beverage making' operation. To answer your question: the grapes are never washed. All the crap and corruption that is on/with the grapes which includes dead and live critters plus their webs, etc. goes into the grape distemer and gets fermented in the primary vessels (the blue ones in the previous post). After the main fermentation is finished which takes around ten days, the grapes get pressed and that liquid is put into our secondary fermenting vessels. These are 200 litre stainless steal vessels. They are not full. We have about 119 litres of Pino Gris and 105 litres of Merlot. Here is a picture of the Merlot: The lid has a bladder around the edge that gets pumped up to keep the top just above the wine as it goes through its secondary fermentation and the gas produced escapes through a one-way valve. We had trouble with one of the bladders and managed to order a new one quickly. So, the wine, both the Merlot and the Pino Gris, have been in the vessels since October 10th. We checked the sulphur levels then and there was none left (the wild yeasts consume it and die) so we added more and then rechecked the levels Oct 25 and it was low again. We topped up the sulfur again and will continue to check the levels every month. It is important to get a good seal to keep the oxygen out which will spoil the wine. Last week my DH 'racked' the wine. He takes the wine out through the facet that is near the bottom of the tank and puts it back into the blue barrels temporarily as he cleans the stainless steel tank. There is a lot of sediment at the bottom of the tank which is composed of dead yeast cells and suspended particles from the wine that settle out. Once the tank is cleaned he puts the wine back in and seals the tank. This racking process clarifies the wine and will be done another two or three times depending on how clear it is getting. You can filter your wine to get it clear but we don't have a filter machine and many think the filtering process takes out flavour from the wine. You may see on the description of some wines that the winemaker filtered the wine or not, depends. The larger wineries producing cheaper wine will filter as it is easier and another reason is so no sediment enters their bottles. Our wine develops sediment in the bottle and needs to be decanted before consumption.

kayb, I must admit, I am not a fan of rouladen but yours really did catch my eye with the BACON wrapped around. And of course braised red cabbage is a perfect match. Nice choice. We made some Brats a month ago so I think those would be wonderful. Thanks.

Oh, baked beans for breakfast

Oh yes toast every morning. My DH's sour dough. The first reason to get one with leftovers a close second. If I were to buy another one, I would be sleeping in the wood shed. It would make a nice Christmas gift though.

Just received the latest London Drugs flyer out here in British Columbia: $229 is their current price, wow, that's the cheapest I've seen it in a long time. We have been using ours to reheat leftovers a lot this week. It does such a lovely job compared to the microwave. Reason alone to get one. Merry Christmas.

I had some chapati dough in the fridge which I used for the flat bread part. Oh, my egg was right out of the fridge. A room temp egg would work better. Thanks.

Just made one for my DH's birthday breakfast. Of course I had some baked winter squash in the fridge which went on there with some beef bacon (double the carcinogen) from our local sausage maker. He really liked it but his egg white wasn't quite done , he ate it anyways....he's too impatient to put it back in for another minute