Tag: recipe

Potato and Leek Soup

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Potato Leek Soup 1When I was a kid I would run outside every New Year’s Eve just as the ball was dropping and the whole neighbourhood was shrieking “Ten! Nine! Eight…” to stare up into the sky and feel the changing of the old year into the new.

I’d stare and stare listen and wonder what made the last year different, and squidge my eyes shut and search in my guts to feel something new and grown up inside.

Every year was the same. No change… No difference between one year and the next. Not until this year… 2014 is the year everything changed! Read More

Chicken In A Pot

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Chicken in A Pot 1A very special chicken deserves very special care, and I can think of no better technique to accentuate all the wild, bug-fed chickeny goodness of a farm chicken than en cocotte.

I got turned on to this old-school French method of cooking chicken from an old issue of Cook’s Illustrated, which touted it as one of the “Discoveries that will change the way I cook”! Well, it wasn’t quite as revolutionary as all that, but it is a great way to cook chicken.

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Ultimate Steak, Part 2 : The Steakening!!!

Shawn 2 Comments

Ultimate SteakAs the berries rot and the leaves spiral in the wind, there’s no denying it… Summer is giving way to fall. Sure, it’s still balmy every weekend (perhaps a St. Matrin’s Summer?) and I can still get from the door to the car without pants, but only just barely.

It is therefore essential to soak in as much of this gorgeous, late summer-corncobs ‘n beachfires- groaning as mom calls you in for dinner- sunshine as possible! One last big BBQ weekend!

I’m ‘gonna bring out those big-gun steaks we got from Gunter Bros, season those beasts well, grill ‘em fast and furious and then bang out a quick sauce to take it over the top. Heat ye coals, fill the flagons and gird thy loins; The Steakening is at hand! Read More

Salt-Cured Salmon With Aquavit and Dill

Shawn 1 Comment

Gravlax 1Using salt to draw out the moisture in fish is a technique of preservation that almost every civilisation in human history has employed. The Mesopotamians did it, and passed their techniques on to the ancient Greeks and Romans (who gave us our word cure, from the Latin curare, meaning “to take care of”). First Nations people along both coasts have used salting as their primary mode of preservation along with smoking and sun-drying. It’s the same story with the Portuguese, Irish, Scots and especially the Scandinavians throughout most of their respective histories. Read More

Portuguese-Style Kale Soup

Shawn 1 Comment

Caldo Verde1Caldo Verde is the ubiquitous Portuguese soup made from potatoes, thinly sliced kale and maybe a bit of paprika-spiked Linguiça sausage thrown in for a little Shazam! I’d heard the name mentioned in cookbooks and on other food blogs plenty of times, but I’d never researched or attempted to cook this “green broth” everyone seemed so hot on.  Then winter hit, and I got sick, and all I had left in the garden was a single miserable little kale plant to comfort me. Read More