Good Tidings

Holiday eating season has gotten off to an excellent start, with no end in sight.

Hanukkah kicked off with our annual tradition of forgoing gifts one night in favor of bringing in a big tray of doughnuts (not homemade sufganiyot, but maybe someday I'll work up to it) and allowing them to be eaten before dinner. I also received a very thoughtful gift from my mother-in-law of a glittery menorah with a good-size sample bag of fancy tea for each night.

Friends hosted a lovely holiday cocktail party on Saturday night. While I avoided the bottle of bubble gum-flavored vodka that was sitting on the sideboard like the plague it surely is, I did drink my share of Bourbon Maple Sours, made even more aromatic and seasonal with a sprig of rosemary. They put out a lovely spread of cheeses, cured meats, smoked salmon, and vegetables with dip, and made hosting an elegant and festive party look incredibly easy.

The holiday baking resumed with the making of stained glass cookies (pictured above). Here is a pro tip: when living in a damp climate, such as, for example, Vancouver, do not crush the Life Savers and then leave them in bowls overnight on the counter. The candy will do its damnedest to re-form and you will have to chop away at it with sharp implements and a wooden spoon while worrying that the glass bowls are going to shatter in your hands. You're welcome.

Last night Mr. Gateau and I were treated to a spectacular dinner by his father and stepmother in honor of the tremendous work all three of them have been doing on their software startup. I was very fortunate to be able to go along for the ride.

We ate at La Quercia, a tiny, cozy restaurant a few blocks from our house that has gotten tremendous reviews, and for good reason. It's an Italian restaurant that uses very carefully chosen ingredients and follows slow-cooking traditions, and every single thing we tasted was spectacular. The restaurant does not have printed menus, because the offerings change so frequently, and they offer either a la carte options or the chance to try a tasting menu of 7, 9, or 11 courses created for the table's specific preferences. With half of our table pescatarians, we were all happy to go with vegetable and fish dishes. At the suggestion of the host, we decided to opt for 7 courses, but when I insist that Mr. Gateau take me back for our anniversary, I think we'll try 9 or 11 and add in some of the meat dishes -- there was a roast lamb that looked out of this world.

We started with cocktails (a perfect Negroni for me) and a first course of meltingly soft burrata on buttered toast with a scattering of sundried tomatoes, pickled shaved baby artichoke hearts, and pickled chanterelles. I fully enjoyed trying each mouthful with a different topping.

Second course was a warm egg custard surrounded with a layer of the thinnest eggplant and served with marinated roasted red peppers and croutons. The warm custard, soft eggplant, and the cool sharpness of the peppers played brilliantly together.

For our third course, we were served the Insalate Con Bagna Cauda, which was shaved fennel and endive, wedges of carrot and roasted beets, all coated in a garlic and anchovy dressing. It was pungent and crunchy.

Next came a risotto simply prepared with an Italian blue cheese and topped with a red wine reduction. It looked so simple but the flavors were rich and sharp. I could have gobbled a huge plate of it, so it's probably just as well we were sharing.

Our pasta course was a delicious linguine dressed in tomato and chili with chunks of branzino. Very satisfying and flavorful.

For the main plate, we were presented with grilled steelhead salmon, served with a warm salad of paper-thin zucchini and strips of roasted pepper over a bed of lentils. Grilled lemons were arranged on the plate. It was a great dish -- meaty fish, bright flavors, and I don't think I've ever enjoyed zucchini this much.

Dessert was a platter of three items -- almond tart with almond ice cream, chocolate panna cotta with apricots, and chocolate chestnut cake with Creme Chantilly. The almond tart had good flavor, but a somewhat mealy texture. The chocolate panna cotta tasted like the skin on chocolate pudding in the best possible way, and the chocolate chestnut cake was so good that Mr. Gateau is hoping to replicate it for Christmas with our stash of chestnut flour.

The wine flowed and the atmosphere was great, as was the company. Can't wait to return.

Stay tuned for the Christmas Eve extravaganza to come. We are hosting Mr. Gateau's family, and expect 21 people for a traditional sit-down dinner. What could possibly go wrong?

Sugar Overload

My 8 year old was invited to a Christmas party yesterday. Had it been me, I would have just brought a bottle of wine and gone happily on my way, but an 8 year old doesn't really have that option. So we decided to make gingerbread cookies, a joy to behold.

I always use the Gourmet Gingerbread Snowflakes recipe, which has you bring the sugars and spices to a boil, then adding baking soda to make a froth, before adding butter, egg, and finally the flour. The resulting dough is very pliable and completely unsticky, which is not something I can say about most gingerbread doughs I've worked with.

An astute reader will notice the Vulcan hands and the Starfleet badges, courtesy of the Trekkie in our house. The rest of the shapes were more traditional, but we really went to town with the frosting and application of every type of sprinkle we had in the house.

We've all seen any number of Pinterest pages of meticulously decorated cookies that display impressive art and craft, but honestly, I like these better.

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.

Thanksgiving, Again

Thanksgiving comes but twice a year when you are an American in Canada. Actually, in our family it came thrice, because we celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving twice in October with different pieces of the family. I thought I could not tolerate another slice of turkey (or another turkey-laden dish of leftovers surprise) -- I'm not even that wild about turkey in the first place -- but as my Facebook feed lit up with cooking checklists and carving tips, travel reports and pie baking action shots -- I realized I felt like I was missing something.

Honestly, Thanksgiving has never been my favorite holiday. I feel the anxiety start to ratchet up as early as August, when my family is hanging out at the end of summer and suddenly everyone starts talking about who will host this year and what will be on the menu. I always found it stressful. I lived in our hometown, but at a distance from where the bulk of the family currently resides, and with no in-laws local (or even celebrating the same holiday, see Canadian Thanksgiving, above), we were always expected to be guests, never hosts. As someone who loves to cook and entertain, this always made me feel a bit of a fifth wheel. And with such a tradition-bound holiday, I never enjoyed the cooking that much. It left little space to try new things.

On Wednesday night all the status updates with pumpkin pie counts finally got to me. I decided we'd have our own little Thanksgiving. Mr. Gateau had a work event, but the U.S. passport-holding family members gathered around the iPad and spoke to my gathered family in upstate New York, then sat down to a mini-feast of our own.

The table was decorated with turkey cards provided by Young Master Gateau in his "personal corporate logo" colors. Yes, my kids design their own trademarks.

The meal centerpiece was a roasted turkey breast, which my butcher had kindly brined for me (including a label with the time to take it out of the brine) and I'd seasoned with garlic, marjoram, and thyme. Although my meat thermometer appears to be stuck at 180F, it came out perfect -- crispy skin and juicy meat. I made a pan gravy with a touch of soy sauce.

Sides were roasted sweet potatoes with a tamarind glaze, skillet Brussels sprouts with maple, lemon, and balsamic, and fresh corn bread.  We were all so stuffed that nobody touched the maple crunch ice cream for dessert.

I think this one is a keeper, as we make our new traditions.

Hopscotch 2014

Mr. Gateau's cousin, Ursula, continued my education in the ways of fine Scotch whiskey Friday night by inviting me to join her at the Hopscotch Festival featuring whiskeys, spirits, and beers from local and international vendors. To prepare myself, I carefully carbo-loaded all day, eating a blueberry muffin, a leftover twice-baked potato with cheddar and bacon, and a gingerbread cupcake.

As has happened to me several times before in my life (first sushi at the venerable Hatsuhana in New York, first taste of bison prepared at the Four Seasons restaurant), Ursula has ruined my ability to drink ordinary Scotch by training me on superior examples such as Macallan Ruby. It turns out, we have similar taste in beverages, and both prefer deep, warm notes like treacle, molasses, raisin, spice, plum, and so on in our libations. This made it easy to taste a variety of offerings, because we wanted to try the same things.

We set off with our official festival-issued shot glasses and started with some Nikka Japanese whiskeys, Pure Malt Red and Pure Malt Black,which were smooth and had interesting wood notes. They were good, but neither got us terribly excited. We decided to taste the Johnnie Walker Blue, which the gentleman behind the counter was extolling as the finest blended whiskey ever in the history of the universe. It was smooth and pleasant, but we agreed it had little character. For the price of a handful of dollar-equivalent tokens, we now would never need to be tempted to buy a full pour at some swanky bar.

Then we tracked down Ursula's white whale -- The Balvenie 21 Year Old Portwood. This was loaded with character -- smoothness, but also the warm depth of aging in port casks. It's a good thing they weren't selling bottles of it that night, because I was feeling loose enough at that point to probably drop a bundle on something so nice.

We stopped for snacks -- samosas, cheese, spring rolls, summer rolls with spicy sauce. All hit the spot.

Then we decided to try a couple of beers. I had my eye on two -- Smoke and Mirrors Imperial Smoked Ale from Coal Harbour Brewing, and Valley Trail Chestnut Ale from Whistler Brewing (if you couldn't tell, Vancouver and environs is having a big microbrew moment, and we could have done nothing but sample beers from city-based breweries all night). The Smoke and Mirrors was fantastic -- rich, smoky, but not overpowering, with gorgeous deep chocolate notes. I'm planning to include a couple of 650 ml bottles on our Christmas Eve bar, because I think it will be the perfect drink with Christmas desserts. The Chestnut Ale was a little disappointing, because it was quite flat. The scent of it was sweet and redolent of chestnuts, while the ale itself wasn't too sweet on the tongue, but that flatness made it cloying nonetheless.

There were any number of bourbons, rums, and gins I would have liked to sample, but at this point my tastebuds were feeling a little fatigued, and I wasn't there to get hammered. Also, the place was getting packed, and it wasn't worth having to press through crowds and skirt past booths selling things like caramel vodka to get to the good stuff.

We decided to cap off the night with the one absinthe on offer, Taboo Absinthe from Okanagan Spirits Craft Distillery. I love absinthe -- anise anything is a favorite, and the other herbal and wood notes just make it even better (I even have a few absinthe perfumes from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab). When water was added to the green liquid and it turned that gorgeous opalescent pale gray-green, we could smell the aromatics from a few feet away. It was so aromatic and strong that it demanded to be sipped slowly, so we took our complimentary shot glasses up to a perch in the forum bleachers and contentedly looked out over the crowds until every last pale green drop was gone. I'm thinking about picking up a bottle, and maybe even some of the classic absinthe accessories. I think this would be a fun way to end a dinner party with friends.

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.