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.

Dinner Plans

After my frustrated post about the slog of figuring out what the put on the dinner table every day, I poked around the intertubes looking for family meal planners. I'd been thinking that I might benefit from a little more structure, at least so I could avoid the daily panic and trips to the grocery store (it's been cold). I've done meal planning before, and I had a hard time sustaining it because it was hard to adapt on the fly to (a) changing plans and (b) picky eaters. Also, I don't like the pressure of feeling I've failed if I have to make a lot of substitutions or skip a few days.

I decided to try something about as minimal as you can get in terms of a planner, and that would allow me to use my own variety of recipes. I took five index cards and labeled each as follows:

MEAT
FISH
CHICKEN/TURKEY
PASTA/RICE
SOUP
PIZZA/TAKEOUT
TEA DINNER

They now reside on the refrigerator, and my plan is to cycle through them each week, so that at least I have a broad category to guide me. On the back, I'm writing down each successful meal so that I have a resource of things that have worked in the past if I am really out of ideas.

So far we have had:

SOUP: Cauliflower Soup with Red Curry and Homemade Pita Bread (half a thumb up on the Lucas Scale)

PASTA/RICE: Stir-Fried Noodles with Fresh and Baked Tofu, a Deborah Madison recipe that to my surprise got a two thumbs up rating from the judging panel. I left out the hot chili, carrots, and red peppers and just made it with plenty of snow peas, broccoli, and mushrooms. Lucas was able to pick out any suspect vegetables, but ate lots of tofu.

CHICKEN/TURKEY: Chicken Thighs and Legs with Maple-Mustard Glaze, Potatoes, and Carrots (see photo), which I based on a Martha Stewart recipe. I love these dishes I can roast in one pan, which makes clean-up a lot more pleasant, and root vegetables cooked underneath chicken automatically taste good. This got only one thumb up (maximum two) because the chicken "had seeds on it."

I'm going to do FISH tomorrow, I think, because my mom arrives late tomorrow night and as she's not a giant fish fan, I will spare her.

SO FAR, SO GOOD.

Winter White

It snowed last night in Vancouver, which caught us all by surprise. Our part of the city doesn't get much snow, and it's early in the season for what we do get. We were out last night having a drink with friends when it started coming down, and boy was that pretty. The city was frosted with it today, cold and crisp. It was a great day for soup and fresh bread.

I'm still adjusting to life as a -- dare I say it? -- housewife. Things that I love to do in smaller doses, like cook, play with children, go marketing, or putter around tidying up, get tedious or aggravating when it's day after day. All jobs are like that, I guess. Getting dinner on the table every night is becoming one of my frustrations. With a team of picky eaters, each picky in his own way (one eats three fruits but no vegetables, one eats a moderate variety of vegetables and beans but no fruit, one theoretically eats most things but will reject a piece of bread for having brown "skin" on it), I often feel like no matter what effort I put in, somebody is going to complain about it and nobody is going to be happy. Mid-afternoon rolls around, and if I haven't figured something out already, I start to panic.

Mr. Gateau and I are flirting with the notion of just making whatever we like, and essentially daring the kids to eat it or nothing. There is always a supply of decent alternatives in the house (cheese, bread, peanut butter, yogurt, mac & cheese in a box, edamame, fixings for cheese quesadillas, eggs) and kids with increasing kitchen competence to prepare it. Still, something nags at me, making me want to produce a meal that is nutritious and appealing to everyone, and frankly, the idea of an 8 year old scrambling eggs while I'm trying to get dinner on the table isn't that attractive.

Tonight, quite by accident, I managed to produce an entirely white (or beige, I guess) meal that concealed some decent nutrition and flavor. I recently got a recipe for a Thai red curry roasted cauliflower soup. It's a great recipe and right in my wheelhouse -- tons of flavor, huge amount of vegetables crammed in there, silky texture, and all made in one pot. I was planning to tell the children it was "White Mulligatawny" and thus capitalize on the fact they have tasted and found acceptable a white bean soup I make and a Mulligatawny. 

I had decided at about 2 in the afternoon to put together a batch of homemade pita. This is something I recently discovered I could easily make, and it really is a pleasure to do, well worth the little bit of time it takes.

I pureed the soup and popped the pitas in the oven, and then it happened. I tasted the soup and found that the red curry paste had packed a serious wallop and the kids would certainly not be able to eat it. I ended up rounding out the meal for them with some hummus and a batch of Annie's Mac & Cheese. To my surprise, they actually liked the soup, though they found it too hot to eat more than a spoonful. My anti-vegetable child even told me it was perfect in every other way, and I should make a mild version very soon. He has no idea he was enjoying a cauliflower soup.

I suppose there is hope.

Dinner is Served

Photo from Food & Wine, my plating isn't halfway as attractive as this.

I'm going to do a massive post at some point about all the joys and frustrations I'm experiencing in cooking dinner more or less daily for a family of five, including three young gentlemen who are, shall we say, not all that diplomatic about expressing their point of view about the offered fare, but I figure if I wait to get it all written, another month will have gone by before I get it all assembled and then I'll have to catch up all over again.

So here is a report on last night's meal, and I hope to update daily-ish. It might get really boring for everyone involved, so I might just start posting highlights and lowlights, but we'll see as it unfolds.

I really wasn't sure what I wanted to make. Some days I feel inspired or have a craving, so those are easy. Some days I am super incredibly uninspired, so we have a Tea Dinner or I fall back on the oh-so-reliant Mother's Little Helper of Annie's Mac & Cheese, some frozen edamame, and some sauteed chunks of boneless chicken breast (a/k/a Daddy Chicken). Or we get pizza.

I knew I wanted to make something but was just out of ideas. I checked out some of the Buzzfeed Food lists, and found some attractive options at a page called "51 Healthy Weeknight Dinners That'll Make You Feel Great." Sold!

I went with a nice simple recipe from Food & Wine for Curried Chicken & Vegetable Pan Roast. It's boneless chicken thighs in a quick curried yogurt marinade (just yogurt, curry powder, garlic, ginger, salt and pepper) roasted over a bed of cubed butternut squash, halved Brussels sprouts, and red onion wedges that have been tossed in canola oil and lightly seasoned with salt and pepper. As suggested, I served it with a little extra yogurt and naan, plus some leftover basmati rice.

I love a one-pan dish, and extra points for the two-stage prep taking place in the same bowl, so fewer dishes to wash.The most time-consuming task was breaking down the squash into cubes, which wasn't really that terrible. If you have access to the precut squash, this is a good use for it, and will help get dinner on the table even faster. Stated cooking time was 60 minutes, and I think I could cut that down, because everything looked good after 40. The extra 15 I gave it made the squash softer than it probably had to be.

Verdict: Mr. Gateau ate two servings of vegetables, which isn't a given, older boys pretty much cleaned their plates without nagging, younger boy ate only starch, which seems to be how things are going lately, and I felt very satisfied with just the chicken and vegetables. I expect this dish (and pan-roast variations) will be in heavy rotation going forward.

Just Like Mama Used to Make

My kitchen mentors, my mother, Amy, and my grandmother, Mary. They're probably two seconds from telling me to get the hair out of my face when this picture was taken.

You could walk into my house today and instantly detect that A Jewish Mother Lives Here. Rafe woke up feeling sick and had to stay home from school, so I knew that homemade chicken soup was called for. I headed to our good local butcher, West Broadway Meat Co., who carries only gorgeous organic and free-range products, and paid a small ransom for a chicken, and picked up the necessary vegetables from Young's up the street, which has amazingly plentiful and inexpensive produce.

While that was bubbling away, I was hit with an urge to really go all the way and make a batch of my grandmother's rightfully celebrated Mandelbrot. I'd published the recipe here right after she died, because it was a signature of hers, and I am often asked by friends and relatives for the recipe. Well, folks, never mind that nobody else seemed to have the genius and foresight to collect it from her, you can get it any time you want.

Here is a confession: I'd never actually made it myself before. It was, as she'd always insisted, supremely easy to do, and now I have a good four dozen delicious cookies on hand. She always told me they freeze well so it's easy to have a cookie on hand when someone shows up for a cup of tea.

With the house redolent with both garlicky chicken soup and cinnamon-dusted cookies, I feel like I did my part today to make something nourishing, warm, and homey.

Tomorrow I'll probably order in.

Tea Time

My husband's parents were both born in England, and this has led our household to indulge in several British treats, among them strong tea (regardless of age), Christmas crackers (with silly crowns worn for entire holiday meal), and Marmite. Probably the most rewarding Britishism, though, has been the concept of high tea, or as it has come to be known in our household, the Tea Dinner.

My mother-in-law, particularly when my kids were very young, would invite friends around to see her grandkids when we were in town to visit, and would often serve what she termed High Tea. I know that definitions of High Tea vary widely, probably based on region, era, and class, but in this case it involves a late afternoon meal including a big pot of tea and plenty of little dishes, both sweet and savory, such as cold chicken, cheese sandwiches, cookies, and fruit. The children found it magical, and always ate well. They've also become fans of very fancy hotel teas, the kind with the cucumber sandwiches and tiered cake racks and Devon cream. To which I say: What's not to like?

One typically flustered evening, we discovered that if you put food on the table, even leftovers, along with a pot of tea and a plate of scones or cookies, and called it Tea, the children would eat with gusto. Thus began the Tea Dinner tradition. Now we have Tea Dinner about once a week, usually when (a) the refrigerator is piled high with little containers of odds and ends and (b) the parents of the household are about to pass out from exhaustion and/or frustration. We brew up a pot of tea, we put the odds and ends on little plates, and if I'm really feeling ambitious, I'll mix up a batch of scones or muffins.

This week, for example, we did it up right. I served:

• three medium-size servings of leftover Moroccan Harira soup
• a platter of sliced cold roast chicken and four slices of steak
• a bowl of Spaghetti Bolognese
• baby kale-swiss chard salad (about half a prewashed bag worth) with vinaigrette and shaved Parmesan
• two and a half leftover twice-baked potatoes with bacon and cheddar
• one slice of plain pizza, cut in 8 little pieces (the kids all laid claim to the slice)
• a dish of spicy green olives
• steamed carrots with butter and salt
• half a cheddar and apple sandwich
• fresh baked blueberry muffins
• pot of Earl Grey

And now my refrigerator is magically cleared out!

Fishie Fishie Fish Fish

Here is something good -- frozen Alaskan Wild Salmon filets with "grill" flavoring I've been getting at Costco. One box has 6 individually vacuum packed filets, and they thaw in about 15 minutes or so in a bowl of water. The seasoning is probably basically paprika, salt, and pepper, with maybe a little lemon flavor, and all I do is bake them at 350 for about 15 minutes, then serve with a little Greek yogurt on the side and a salad. Presto! Low-carb, fish-oil-laden, virtually work-free dinner that isn't even embarrassing to serve for guests.

What I had for dinner

Just so you don't get the idea it's all homemade pesto and gourmet ice cream and grass-fed beef around here.

Dinner #1 (pre-Cirque de Soleil): pint of Bass

Dinner #2 (after show, back at home): 2 slices leftover pork roast, eaten with fingers; brownie