eG Foodblog: Chromedome - Living the dream...I guess...

[chromedome]

Abra: Yes, AP flour. I'm too cheap to waste cake flour on a quick-snack cake. Kind of defeats the purpose, yeah? Though the reason I changed the methodology was to avoid toughness in the crumb. I don't remember where the Rombauers lived, but I'm guessing their flour was a bit "softer" than ours up here in Durum-istan.

Darcie: As I've said a couple of times, it sounds like more than it really is. If you were to describe your workday in my typically breathless style ( ) it would probably sound pretty impressive, too.

The butter tart recipe is pretty simple. For a dozen tarts made in old-style (ie, smaller) muffin tins, use

1c brown sugar

2 tbsp butter

1 tbsp vinegar

1 egg

1/2 tsp of vanilla extract

Beat the ingredients together, fill the shells, and bake. No sweat. As I said, I now add just a bit of cinnamon to mine. This size batch would probably fill up a dozen "bought" 3" tart shells, as well. Add pecans or raisins or walnuts or whatever, as desired. You could also add more butter, without hurting anything.

Today's breakfast was a small drink of kefir, because I didn't really feel like eating. Got to work at my usual time, and this time I brought my uniform with me...

We'd run out of the ham & cheese pockets I make, so that was priority one this morning. It's pretty simple, I just thaw sheets of commercial puff pastry; roll them out from 12"X15" to roughly 16"X16", and cut each sheet into nine squares. A reasonable portion each of sliced deli ham and grated cheese, pinch the edges, and freeze 'em up for later use. I make up enough for a week and a half, while I'm at it. This takes up the bulk of my morning. Mid-morning my reluctance to eat has worn off, and I'm nibbling on the trim (edge) pieces from the tray of caramel squares...a chronic weakness of mine. The rest of my routine (product checks, corn bread, strudels, etc) you've heard often enough already, so I won't repeat myself.

For lunch today, I opt for one of our deluxe sandwiches; a thick heap of cold cuts on foccaccia with provolone cheese. Pretty good! I usually go with one of the hot meals, but every once in a while I feel the need for a sandwich or a bowl of soup. Fortunately, we sell both and they're good quality. The breads come from one of the best bakeries in the city, the cold cuts are excellent (and sometimes made from our house-raised pork and beef), and the soups are made from scratch with house-made stocks and fresh ingredients.

After lunch I have a few more things to do. We have some apples that are getting tired, so I cut/core/peel half a case. I'm thinking that I'll make up strudel filling today or tomorrow, but it turns out I've got enough strudels already made up to get me through the week. I'll probably leave that until Friday. At any rate, I've got another whole case of apples to get through between now and then, as time and opportunity permit.

I also make up some more pastries for the coffee bar, since I hadn't turned out as many as I'd wanted earlier in the week. Finally, I make up more of the mini-almond croissants for the pastry trays, since we've had one of those ordered for tomorrow. What with that, and attending to customer issues, and taking catering orders, and arranging an information package for my cashier who'll be entering the Culinary Arts program in the fall, it adds up to a pretty full afternoon.

Amazingly, I'm out in pretty good time today. That's a bonus, because I want to get to the library. I have to drop off Jacques Pepin's La Technique (slightly overdue), and pick up Fergus Henderson's The Whole Beast, which I've had reserved and been impatiently awaiting. Having done that, I'm home by 5:45.

My wife is not feeling well, so she's already in bed. For supper I follow my nose to the cupboard where I keep the spices, grains, and legumes; and spend a few minutes lost in though. Hmmmm. So I put on a pot of rice, another with wild rice and kamut, and I pull down the quinoa as well. That doesn't need as long, so I keep that back for later. I bring up one of Saturday's chicken breasts and put it in the microwave to thaw.

I put on a frying pan and put in some oil, minced ginger, and minced garlic. Once it starts to smell nice I slice up the chicken breast and put it in, a few pieces at a time, until it's all lightly cooked on the outside. Then I crack a can of coconut milk, whisk in a bit of cornstarch, and add it to the chicken. This can simmer for a while, as I fire up the computer and log onto eGullet...

I crush one allspice berry, about a teaspoon of whole coriander, one cardamom, and several black peppercorns with my mortar and pestle, using a good pinch of coarse salt for the extra grinding effect. That goes into the simmering pan. I'm not shooting for a specific dish or ethnicity here, I just like the way all these things go together. I'll finish off the chicken with chopped scallions and cilantro.

I'm thinking it needs something else, so I soak a bit of tamarind in hot water with a small chunk of jaggery. When it's nicely pasty, I'll force it through a little strainer. We'll use this as a flavour accent, at the table.

Now I'm going to go out and pick a bit of salad for an accompaniment, and we'll resume this later on.

[chromedome]

I have to say, for once the first day of summer wasn't a bitter joke. After a week of mostly rainy skies, today was gorgeously sunny and the hottest day of the year so far, at 28C. When I got home after work, the first thing I did was to run around and open up all the windows to let the breeze blow through.

So, after supper I decided that (heat notwithstanding) I was going to fire up the oven. After that discussion of Saskatoons vs blueberries last night, I thought about the frozen blueberries downstairs and had to make a cake. I used a plain version of the quick cake discussed upthread, with some nicely-soured milk and about two cups of frozen berries. I had a piece a few minutes ago, while scanning my second batch of photos (yay!), and I do believe I'll have another momentarily. It's soft and moist and altogether wonderful.

By the time supper's cleared away and the cake is out of the oven, it's about 8:45. It occurs to me that I need to go to the nearby pharmacy to get a prescription filled, and I also need to get to Wal-Mart to do the one-hour photo thing. Both stores close at 10:00. Hmmm. I live at just precisely the distance from the mall (where Wal-Mart is) that I can walk there as quickly as ride the bus. Except of course I need to go to the pharmacy, which would mean waiting for a second bus. Never mind the bus, then.

So I bootle off to the pharmacy, and drop off the prescription. Then I scuttle along to Wal-Mart, arriving at 9:20. Fortunately, the young lady at the counter assures me that the one-hour photo service actually only takes about 30 minutes. So I drop my film, and hoof it back down to the pharmacy to collect the prescription (and pick up some Pringle's, which were on sale); then back up to Wal-Mart again, arriving at precisely one minute to 10. Oy.

On the walk home I stop at one of the local bottle shops and treat myself to a "single" of Morland's "Old Speckled Hen," an English ale which is new to me. This is by way of a reward for my exertions, and also to finish off my week of blogging on a celebratory note. It turns out to be a pretty decent brew, and well-suited for the cooling of a red-faced, sweaty cook/baker.

Allllllrighty, then, let's turn back the clock to my Saturday dinner. After getting home from coffee at the mall with my "little" girl (she had hot chocolate), I set about making the pasta. First, two cups of flour with two of the small free-range eggs and one of the regular-sized ones:

Then a spot of kneading...

...and when it mostly comes together, form it into a ball.

I'm not too concerned if there are a couple of dry floury bits, because I'm going to leave it sit and rest in a plastic bag for a while, as I do the chicken. The moisture will even itself out through the dough, and when I come back to the pasta all will be well. Further down the page, in the chicken photos, you will see a blue spray bottle in the background as I work. That contains a sanitizing bleach solution, which I sprayed onto the table before returning from the chicken to the pasta. Resuming, then, at the point where I come back to the pasta...

The rolling process.

I've divided the dough into four equal portions for ravioli-making purposes. As described above, I have made a filling of minced chicken, a bread-and-milk panade, some cream, and seasonings. I piped this onto the pasta at a reasonable spacing, since I need to get in between the mounds of chicken to press out the air and seal up the sheets of pasta, like so...

The little white cup contains water, for sealing the pasta. I used my little white plastic scraper to cut the individual ravioli (got to be nice to the kitchen table, doncha know), and boiled them in small batches. I tossed each batch with butter as it came out, and when they were finished mounded the bacon & mushrooms over top, and served it with a salad:

Then there was the whole process of breaking down the chickens, as described above. First, we have the setup and the victim:

I will only be using the steel at the very start, but the knife looked kinda lonely sitting there by itself. In the foreground you will see the plastic bag with the pasta dough resting in it; the mound of non-food in the back is one of my wife's current beading projects.

The first step is to remove the wings...

...and then the legs.

Then, using the knife's fine tip as an extension of your fingertip, free the breasts from the keelbone and ribs. The carcass and wingtips, as you will see in the next picture, go onto a separate plate to be frozen as soup makings.

For the second bird, before breaking it down, I wanted to peel off the skin in one piece to use as the wrapper for a ballotine. The bird is upside down, and I start by making an incision all the way from the neck opening to the tail, running the length of the hen's back. Then, using the knife to help with the recalcitrant parts, I peel the skin off each side of the bird's back.

Slide the skin off the leg and drum; just like turning a sock inside out. Moving up to the wings, sever them at the end of the first joint; leaving just the "drumette" attached to the breast. Unroll the skin from the wingbone too, just as you did the drumstick. Use your knife as necessary to free the skin from tendons, membranes, etc.

The end result: a chicken to be broken down like the other; and a large, intact chicken skin to be scraped and trimmed and used to wrap all manner of chickeny goodness for later cooking.

Finally, my Father's day breakfast...the cheese omelette my son prepared for me.

It's a shame this camera can't get a decent closeup of a plated dish, as the omelette was really quite well-executed.

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

This blog has given you a pretty reasonable look into my own life and circumstances, but I haven't done a whole lot of justice to the city or the province. By way of a quick redressing of the balance, here are a few good things to be found locally...

Alberta's agricultural base is its biggest single economic engine, even more than the oil & gas sector. In order to foster closer relationships between producers and consumers, we now have an organization called "Growing Alberta" which publishes a pretty decent magazine quarterly, and runs an informative website here.

The doyenne of the local foodwriting community is Judy Schultz of the Edmonton Journal; a woman with a national reputation and a nomination for a Governor General's Award under her belt. She and another notable local foodie, Mary Bailey, co-wrote a great book called the "Food Lover's Trail Guide to Alberta." Basically it covers everything from restaurants to farmer's markets; anything the visiting or resident foodie might want to see or do. The Amazon link is here:

...click...

That's not the proper eGullet affiliate link thingie, but I'll come back and edit that in as soon as I find the thread that tells how to do it.

One of the more interesting local artisanal producers is Emanuela Leoni, who hails from the Parma region of Italy. Having settled in Alberta, she became convinced that the local milk would make a very high quality Parmesan-style cheese; so she formed a relationship with some local dairy farmers and began producing "Leoni Grana" cheese. We used this a lot at my school, and it's a damned fine cheese.

We also have a very good artisanal producer of yogurt here, a family-owned operation called Bles-Wold. The proprietors moved here from Holland 11 years ago, and began producing yogurt as a sideline to their dairy business in 1996. It's really good yogurt, especially considering that they've focused their efforts on a reduced-fat product.

Finally, although I've resisted all week, I'm also going to put in a plug for my employers as a local artisanal producer. The company started out as a family-owned pig farm (which it still is, among other things), back in the 1960's. In the 70's, when the mantra became "leaner, leaner, leaner," they began breeding lean pork like everyone else. Like everyone else, they discovered that lean pork just didn't taste as good. Most producers left it at that, reasoning that it was another case of "be careful what you wish for."

The Price family weren't prepared to do that.

They founded a company specifically for the purpose of improving the quality of local pork; importing quality breeding stock from England (where they were ahead of us in the quality of their pork) and combining those genes with the best of their own bloodlines. For the last three decades they've been singlemindedly attempting to breed the best-tasting pork in the world, and they've done a grand job. I have not personally tasted all of the world's best pork, so I can't speak to that, but I can say that it is outstanding in quality. The hogs are raised in family-owned farms, on natural feeds, and only receive antibiotics when they're sick (not with the daily rations).

At a certain point along the way, the family began to resent giving up control of their product to the meatpackers, after lavishing all of this care and attention on their animals. So...they bought the packing plant. Around this time, they also branched into ranching beef cattle along similar principles of natural feeds and breeding for flavour.

The next step, inevitably, was to open retail outlets to sell the product directly to the public; an example of vertical integration that's rather unique in North America. Rounding out our product line, most of our produce is sourced directly from individual growers in the US; and we've got a tight relationship with a quality meat-curing firm here in the province to make ham, bacon, and cold cuts from our meats. It makes for some seriously loyal clientele, I can assure you.

It occurs to me, at this point, that while I've given you a lot of detail on my end of the business, I haven't really put it in context by giving you a store tour. I'll do that now, while wrapping up. Coming in the south end of our store, next to the wine cellar, you'll find a few shelves of dry goods: good EVOO and quality vinegars; preserves of various sorts; and some good-quality nibblies like Lindt chocolate and Lesley Stowe's RainCoast Crisps. Next to this you will find two coolers full of fresh produce, for those who are less interested in lunch and more interested in avoiding a trip to the supermarket on the way home.

As you come around the back of the store you will find a section containing two huge (1m) cast-iron pans, imported from Germany, in which we cook stews and stir-fries every day. Fresh soups are also sold out of this section. Continuing around the back of the store you arrive at the deli, which functions as our "a la carte" dining area. Here we keep several meat, fish, and poultry entrees, as well as various starches and salads. Next to the deli is the sandwich area/back display case, where we set out hundreds of sandwiches each day to meet the lunch rush; and also my desserts, pies, and take-away meals.

Turning the corner and heading toward the north end of the store, the next cooler contains fresh and cured meats, as well as cheeses and housemade dips and salsas. The remaining refrigerated cases contain dairy (including the Bles-Wold yogurt) and soft drinks of various kinds. Next is my old haunt, the pizza/pasta area, which contains the daily carved item, pizzas, quesadillas, and the daily pasta special. Finally, at the north end, you'll find my bakery, which by now you know pretty well. There are two islands in the store: the north one is the coffee bar, where we sell Starbucks coffees, wine (we're a licensed establishment), and my baked goods; the south island is the salad bar/citrus juicing area. We go through hundreds of litres of fresh-squeezed orange juice in a week. It's very good.

Overall, the food here is certainly not fine dining, but for quality and flavour it would compare favourably to most mid-upper range "family" restaurants. We do it well, and are frequently picked as the best place to get a lunch in Downtown Pedway Hell. They're a fine operation, and whatever my day-to-day frustrations I've learned a lot here.

[/plug]

This wraps up my week of blogging, though I'm sure Soba will keep the thread open tomorrow as usual so that I can respond to any late questions. I know I'll spend the next month or so thinking of things that I'd been keen to discuss, but which have slipped away from me in the course of the week.

Thank you all for your feedback, and your enthusiasm!

[Pan]

I've enjoyed this blog very much!

I do have a question: How difficult was it for the establishment you work for to get its license to sell wine or, if you weren't there at the time and therefore don't know, how involved a process is it in general to get liquor licenses in Edmonton?

[Lori in PA]

Thank you very much for your blogging efforts. I much enjoyed the peek into life in your part of Canada. Were those Saskatoons sharing the plate with your Dad's Day omelet and melon?

[chromedome]

Pan: my understanding is that getting a liquor license in most provinces involves a nightmarish stack of forms about an inch high, and any number of provincial functionaries with invoices in their hands. I haven't had occasion yet to be involved personally in such an application.

Lori: no, those were green seedless grapes. Saskatoons are smaller and darker (and later in the year).

[TheFoodTutor]

This has been a great blog, Chromedome. Let me just say that I think your pictures display an incredible amount of care in your food preparation, and the descriptions of your daily activities are incredibly impressive.

Thank you so much for sharing this with us.

[SobaAddict70]

This thread will be open for the remainder of today in case anyone wants to post follow-up questions or wave goodbye.

Tune in on Saturday when the eGullet Foodblog reappears in the wilderness of North Cakalacky. (That's North Carolina to all y'all Yankees. )

Soba

[Darcie B]

Thanks for the recipe, although I must disagree that any method of describing my day could compare in energy levels to yours. Kudos for an excellent blog.

[Smithy]

Thanks for doing this blog, chromedome. It's been interesting reading. I'm especially impressed with the way you managed to keep track of, and respond to, all the questions as they were asked.