Doesn't TaZte Like Chicken

It’s been over a month since we last put an entry on the blog. Time flies when life gets in the way, doesn’t it? Work, travel and other hobbies have been making much demands on our free time, and we’ve had to oblige lest we go stir crazy from lack of variety. Certainly, food is one of our interests, but we decided to take a short break from writing about cooking and eating so that we could get a new (and perhaps fresher) perspective on the kind of material to put on this blog.

Going back and reading through the entries on this blog, they could best be described as a collage of procedural articles on cooking or play-by-play descriptions of where and what we’ve eaten. And that is really quite different than how we had originally envisioned our posts to be. Christina had started this blog with the intention of sharing different out-of-the-ordinary experiences with other people. She wanted to not only describe the food, but also relate it to memories or experiences that others could identify with. This is of course easy to conceptualize but a lot harder to execute. Banging out post after post with “meaning” in relatively short order did not come easily or naturally, and we soon found ourselves falling into the habit of writing a diary about what we cooked and where we ate. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but it just isn’t what we had started out to do.

Those of you who watch Top Gear will know who Jeremy Clarkson is. For those who don’t, Clarkson is an English television personality and auto journalist with a carefully cultivated polarizing personality. You either love to hate him or hate to love him. Mostly, it has to do with him being a right prat on occassion, which is pretty much in keeping with his act of being a 12-year old trapped in a 50-year-old 6′4″ body. He is also a bloody brilliant journalist. He is supposed to write about cars, but if you read his work, you will find that he does just about anything but. Most auto journalists follow a standard formula when writing an article – they describe the car, describe the features/options/prices, describe the drive, etc etc. It’s all very informative and very technical and chock full of information. In fact, it’s everything except entertaining. Clarkson on the other hand, couldn’t care less about any of the stuff the other journos get in a huff over. Sure, he might give a perfunctory description of the features in a car (usually in the context of something he finds silly), but what he mainly does is to write about the car against the backdrop of a larger, funnier metaphorical story. For instance, how could anybody relate poor eyesight to a Citroen C5? Clarkson can, nonsensical though it may be. We enjoy his humor (and studied insults) – take the following two paragraphs for example:

In two short paragraphs, he manages to slag off an English town and diss three cultures while making (rather effectively) a point about the car’s shape and quality. No, Clarkson’s not Hemingway. His articles are by no means the height of intellectually stimulating or thought-provoking writing. In fact, Clarkson’s articles are sometimes downright silly. But they are always good for a light, entertaining read.

That “entertaining” quality is something that we are working hard to capture in our future posts. No, we don’t have the comedic writing talent of Clarkson, but that’s no reason not to try. If our attempts don’t come off well, the only people suffering will be you, our readers! No skin off our backs really. Maybe it will work out, maybe it won’t, but we’re sure going to give it a whirl. Watch this space…

Christina & ET

When I was in Montreal last week, I noticed that the links on the site weren’t working. After getting back to Vancouver, I realized that our Wordpress installation had been hacked.

Since I don’t have a lot of time at the moment to make comprehensive fixes, I just upgraded Wordpress to the latest – and supposedly most secure – version. I’ll be in Toronto next week, but hopefully, I’ll find some time in the next few days to improve the look-and-feel of the site.

[ET]

Location: My tiny kitchen

A mixed green salad with chanterelle and shitake mushrooms, jumbo scallops and pistachios.

I love mushrooms. From the ordinary everyday button mushroom to the fancy and insanely expensive black or white truffle, I cannot think of a kind that I don’t like. My favourite way to prepare them is to make them into a ragout, which is just a fancy term for sauteing the mushrooms with garlic, shallots, a small amount of stock or wine and cook until all the liquid has been reduced. Most mushrooms have a lot of flavour; the reduction simply intensifies and enhances the great flavour. Sometimes I serve the ragout as a side-dish to compliment a piece of perfectly seared steak, other times I put them on a patty to make a juicy mushroom hamburger. When ET and I want to have a light meal (yes, sometimes we do too!), I would mix up a plate of greens with the ragout. I’m not much of a salad eater, but when the salad has mushrooms, I can easily finish a plate

This recipe serves 2 people.

- 10 medium-sized shitake mushrooms
- 10 medium-sized chanterelle mushrooms (or hedgehog if chanterelle is not in season)
- 30 pistachios, ready-to-eat, shells removed
- 4 jumbo scallops
- Mixed greens (as much as you like)
- 1 clove of garlic, minced
- balsamic vinegar
- extra virgin olive oil
- sherry

1. Rinse the mushrooms. Remove the stalk of the shitake. Cut off the tip of the chanterelle stalks. Cut the mushrooms into pieces. You don’t need to cut them too small because they will shrink after they are cooked.

2. Heat a pan with 1 tbsp of olive oil. Saute the garlic. Put in the mushrooms. Put in 1/2 tsp of salt, black pepper and 3 tbsp of sherry. Let the mushroom cooked until all liquid has been reduced.

3. Using a paring knife, score criss-cross marks on the top and bottom of each scallop. Season the scallops with salt and pepper. Coat them with cornstarch, dust off excess. In a pan, put in 1 tbsp of butter. Once the butter has melted, place the scallops into the pan. Let the scallops seared over high heat for one minute for each side. After both sides have been seared to golden brown, cover the pan for 1.5 minutes and lower the heat to medium. The trick to have perfectly seared scallops is to not to move them too much during searing. The time noted here cooks the scallops to medium-well. If you want to cook the scallops fully, let them sit in the covered pan for 1 minute longer.

4. In a large bowl, put in 1/2 tsp of mustard. Put in 1 tbsp of balsamic vinegar. Using a whisk, whisk in 1 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil. Once the olive oil has been completely incorporated with the vinegar, whisk in another 1 tbsp of olive oil. When the oil has been incorporated, whisk in another 1 tbsp. In the end, you will get a dressing that is an emulsion of olive oil and vinegar. Whisking the olive oil one tablespoonful at the time ensures the success. If you have more greens, you can make more dressing by using more vinegar and olive oil, as long as you follow the ration of 1 part vinegar to 3 parts oil.

5. Toss the greens in the dressing.

6. To assemble: place the greens on a plate. Add the mushroom ragout on top of the greens. Place the scallops on the salad and sprinkle pistachios all over it.