Family Dinner Continues Apace

Greetings Earthlings! I am pleased to report that my family has not yet starved to death under my care. In fact, I have hit on some dinners that have gotten the much-sought Lucas Two Thumbs Up rating.

The first thing that has happened is that Lucas started art classes at the amazing Arts Umbrella, which offers high-quality visual and performing arts instruction to children from preschool through high school. The school is located on Vancouver's famous Granville Island, which is packed full of art studios, galleries, restaurants, and the amazing Public Market, where I now spend a couple of hours every Friday busting our food budget for the week while Lucas takes his mixed media class. Even with the best of intentions, I can't help but return home with bags stuffed with endless varieties of delicious goodies -- lately I can't resist the pyramids of neatly stacked strawberries and blueberries, the multicolored bunches of kale, and the huge variety of grains, spices, and other nifty ingredients at the Grainry. And I never fail to stop by Oyama Sausage Co., whose massive selection of creative sausages made from local high quality meats has become the center of our Friday dinner. I can't even bring myself to look at their full selection of charcuterie, pate, and cheese, or I might never leave.

Sausages with herbed couscous, stewed zucchini, and fruit plate.

 

Yes, Friday night is Sausage Night. Each week, I select three or four varieties (this is hard! they have dozens and dozens, and the selections change daily) and as soon as I get home I pop them into the oven while I put away all the produce and other tasty bits, and put together some simple and quick side dishes (couscous is a favorite). I've started cutting up a little fruit plate for Lucas and Baby Gateau, so at least they get some plant matter into them.

This week we sampled Toulouse pork sausage (mild and perfect for kids), Chicken with Preserved Lemon (a little dry, but tasty), Elk with Huckleberry (gamey in a good way), and Pork with Prune (delicious, but deemed "too fruity" by the kids). Others we've tried have included Duck with Truffle, Smokey Bison (Lucas's favorite), Pork with Red Wine and Herbs (fantastic), and Japanese Chicken (kids raved).

Ham night.

Another gift that kept on giving was the procurement of a spiral-sliced ham from Costco when we ventured across the border to Bellingham, WA. They have most of the stuff we're used to getting at the Vancouver Costco, but some of our favorite American products can only be found if we drive down to Washington State. Fortunately, I now know where to go when I run out of the supply of A-1 Steak Sauce my mother brought me when I whined that what they sell under that label in Canada is a totally different product.

The ham, cooked with a simple maple glaze, served us for umpteen meals. The first night, I served it with mashed sweet potatoes and a green salad, but everyone clamored for "regular" potatoes, so I made that the next night too. The ham showed up in school lunch sandwiches, in cold cut platters at home, and finally its bone and last scraps of meat produced a phenomenal French Canadian Pea Soup with yellow split peas.

My bella chicken.

And my crowning achievement was the Julia Child-inspired roasting of a chicken. I took a midweek trip to Granville Island to obtain a haggis for our cousin's Robert Burns Day party, and while at the butcher purchased a huge chicken. The last time I had tried to roast a chicken was a complete disaster -- it would not cook through, and only later did I realized that both my meat thermometer and the temperature gauge on the oven were busted. I have remedied that with an oven thermometer and a new meat thermometer and all is well.

French chef-type roast chicken is not a set-it-and-forget-it project. You have to baste and turn that bastard every 10-15 minutes, but boy is it worth it. It came out succulent, with a well-seasoned, brown and crisp skin and gorgeous drippings for a gravy. I roasted some potatoes in a dish alongside it and served a bowl of my favorite flash-fried kale with lemon, and it was a truly fine meal. It was big enough to give us a second night of roast chicken, plus its carcass tipped the balance and allowed me to clear out my freezer stash of chicken bits and vegetable trimmings to make the best chicken stock I ever made, following Gabrielle Hamilton's instructions in the Prune cookbook. I'd added a few extra drumsticks to the pot, and the meat from those later went into a batch of chicken tacos, while about the stock is what made that pea soup so rich and delicious.

 

But the very best part of all about my weekly trips to Granville Island may not be the delectable things coming out of the kitchen. It's that I have a little extra time to myself. After all the shopping is done, I settle myself down in a cafe or, better yet if I'm not driving, a bar and treat myself to something nice. Last week, the lovely bartender at the Liberty Distillery made me their delicious take on an Old Fashioned -- white whiskey with orange gomme syrup, bitters, lemon, and star anise. It was lovely, and I quite relaxed as I sipped it, while admiring the ruby red strawberries and opalescent black kale spilling out of my bags around me. It was a perfect start to the weekend.

How I Won Family Dinner, or Two Thumbs Up

Lucas showing the whole hand.

I have previously mentioned the Lucas Dinner Scale, by which my opinionated middle son rates all meals on a thumbs up-thumbs down system, including all points in between. Two thumbs up is at the top of the scale, with a damning-with-faint-praise rating available of one thumb held at about a 20 degree angle to the floor. It's a tough crowd.

But I've been on a roll for the last week, earning repeated double thumbs. I decided to memorialize it, in case it never happens again.

All your leftovers are belong to me.

On Friday I did baked Salmon Teriyaki, with jasmine rice and edamame. Not as highly ranked on the Lucas Scale, but it's a favorite of Teen Gateau, who likes to flake the salmon and mix it with the rice. These guys never tolerated fish at all when we lived in New York, but now that we're in Vancouver they are becoming more open to it. The leftovers of this went into a very nice salad for my lunch -- greens, a honey-mustard-white balsamic dressing, and some sliced mushrooms I tossed in the dressing before adding to the plate.

Saturday was FONDUE NIGHT. Fondue is a huge family favorite, and I'd neglected to make it since we moved. (I also like to preserve its power to impress by not making it too often). We have a beautiful copper fondue pot on a wrought-iron stand that we bought after seeing similar ones at the wonderful (and apparently late lamented) Fonduementale in Montreal. I return again and again to the classic Swiss cheese fondue with Emmentaler, Appenzeller, and Gruyere with white wine and a splash of Kirschwasser. Since we left all our booze behind when we moved, I didn't feel like dropping 25 bucks on a bottle of Kirschwasser to use a couple times a year, so I successfully substituted some of the brandy my dried cherries have been soaking in for about a month. It added a touch darker color to the final product, but not noticeable to anyone who might have cared, and I think the dish is nicer with that touch of sweetness than without it.

I have a book full of fondue recipes -- Roquefort! Cheddar and Beer! -- but the classic is so mouthwateringly good that I never switch it up. Occasionally, we'll do a meat fondue with hot broth or oil and a selection of sauces and aiolis to dip the food into. The Parmesan-Basil Aioli I served on Christmas Eve would be perfect for this, with chicken or beef, and the kids love a Maple-Soy Glaze with pork. Anyway, after every last bit of cheese was scraped up, every bread cube and slice of pear and green apple was gone, we moved on to a simple chocolate fondue with strawberries, apples, dried apricots, and chunks of pound cake. It's amazing we still had room, but that managed to disappear too.

On Sunday, while the rest of the family was out having a swimming test to sign up for lessons, I cast around the kitchen for something to cook. I had defrosted boneless chicken thighs with the notion in mind to make Chicken Malai Kebabs (a/k/a Chicken Kebab the Builder) but when I went to set up the marinade I discovered that the only plain yogurt in the house was at the back of the fridge and practically unrecognizable as a food product. I shelved that idea for later in the week (in fact, Tiny Fuzzy indignantly asked me tonight why I had not made them yet. People.) What I did have, though, were sufficient ingredients to make a simplified Chicken Mole, with tomato, dark chocolate, cinnamon, clove, onion, garlic, and cayenne. We had that with rice, and got something hovering around one and a half thumbs on the Lucas Dinner Scale. There was enough left, and so much sauce, that for Monday night I simply popped the leftovers in their dutch oven back on the stove and added kidney beans and corn kernels to create a Chicken Mole Stew. The flavors had a chance to develop overnight, and my household full of discerning palates pointed out that next time it could use a little less cinnamon. Noted.

Hello, Joe.

Somehow on Tuesday I managed to get a hankering for Sloppy Joes, which I've made maybe once in my life. My kids like burgers, they like spaghetti and meat sauce, they like sweet and sour meatballs, so I figured this would work. I got some whole wheat buns from the bakery, made a nice thick tangy sauce for the organic ground beef I always have in the freezer from Costco, and served it with salted edamame. Cheers around the table and double thumbs. The meal was a hit, and even better, I had played the "let's bake something!" card when the two younger boys were having simultaneous afternoon hissy fits, and we had a pan of freshly-baked Blondies for dessert. No nuts allowed by the Picky Ones, but somehow we survived. Even easier to make than chocolate chip cookies, and there is something about them I like even better. (One enduring mystery of life here in Canada, though, is why we can get Nestle Qwik but not Tollhouse Morsels, and Hershey's Chip-Its but not Hershey's Syrup.)

Blondies have more fun.

And then tonight we again had major success. For American Thanksgiving, my butcher had made me a very nice rolled and tied boneless turkey breast that they had brined and gave me to carry home in a plastic bag with liquid, like a goldfish at the fair. It was so simple to prepare and so delicious that I decided to put it into the repertoire. All the butcher requires is a little advance notice, so I stopped by yesterday and asked them to put one aside for me. Today I simply laid it on a rack inside a rimmed baking sheet and seasoned it lightly with olive oil, salt and pepper, marjoram, and sage. I put some halved baby potatoes, tossed in olive oil, salt, pepper, and rosemary into a baking pan and cooked at the same time, and served it all with some steamed stringbeans (also dressed in olive oil, salt, and pepper) and a little gravy I made out of the pan juices, a bit of chicken broth, and a drop of soy sauce, bound with a little cornstarch. Every morsel was gobbled up, and the thumbs were high in the air. I couldn't have pulled this off when I was still working full time in an office with a commute, but since I'm home now to put things in the oven before five (if the meal gets delayed past about 6, the witching hour starts to be upon us), this is a really nice weeknight dinner that feels more special than it really is.

I'm fairly assured that Chicken Kebab the Builder tomorrow will keep the streak alive (I'm going to try marinating cauliflower florets in the same yogurt marinade and roast them alongside, in part of my effort to restore my lower carb routine -- hopefully my waistbands will thank me). However, I'm sure this will be followed by a month of missing the mark entirely. Stay tuned.