The Top

The blow-out birthday meal was has left me so speechless that I've been trying to write this post for 3 days.

Tasting menu with wine pairings
cost: more than the pizza meal, and let's leave it at that
location: Splendido
soundtrack: the hushed din of an elegant restaurant
dress code: dry-clean only clothing
value: priceless -- one of the best meals of my life

Tasting menus can be tricky -- some lesser restaurants just small-size their menu offerings, pair them with whatever wines are open, and throw in an amuse-bouche to round out the affair. Not so at Splendido. Chef and sommelier have considered and tended to every single mouthful, from the wickedly good tiny blue cheese shortbread cups filled with impossibly smooth leek purée to the hit of preserved lemon with butter-poached lobster, to the headiness of an extraordinary Californian cab-sauv served with sous-vide squab.

Other highlights are hard to pin down, since it was all just so preciously good, and served with such elegance and something like a refined tenderness -- everyone who works here loves this food too. And then when we complimented the chef on his homemade boudin noir, he insisted we take a large portion of it home with us. Who does that? What a guy. What a meal.

And what a wonderful, indulgent, happy week.

Birthday dinner

It's all about balance. Tomorrow night we'll eat at one of the best restaurants in the city. Tonight, we dined on fast food.

Take out pizza, garlic bread, chicken wings...served with a bottle of Sardinian wine

cost: $35 plus wine

location: back at the wobbly IKEA table

soundtrack: a rented Woody Allen film

dress code: back into the track pants (should I be worried?)

value: priceless

Does it get any better than this? Gooey pizza, loaded with bacon, pineapple and mushrooms, lashed with Tabasco, garlic bread soaked with buttery niceness, chicken wings !? and a bottle of good wine. I was so content that I fell asleep on the couch at 10:30.

Up next: 5-star dining at Splendido

Salmon sashimi

This is the hardest thing to order. Try saying it>> it inevitably comes out as shamon sassimee. And that's before the double Jamesons.

But alright, another favourite thing: raw salmon.

Salmon, crudo
cost: $6.95
location: Kokyo Sushi, a wonderful dirty little hole in the wall
soundtrack: an guy at the next table bragging about how he's "been to Japan"
dress code: the same damn outfit I've had on since 7am
value: high

Up next: dirty pizza

The fruits of the sea

I really cannot stand the lingering stank of fish in my apartment and so my favourite restaurant is a fishie one -- I gorge on fish, my apartment remains pristine.

Dinner at Starfish
cost: all in about $400 for 4 ppl
location: downtown
soundtrack: the racket of a busy restaurant (take that, recession)
dress code: better-than-average
value: very high

Gorgeous little jewel oysters from St Simon, NB, peat-smoked salmon (amazing -- as if the salmon got repeatedly drunk on Talisker), grilled sardines with a chorizo-corn chip mash-up, sea bream with saffron risotto cake and other yummies and some pickled herring. Mmm.
Oh, and one wicked good warm, gooey sticky toffee pudding.

Toast with butter

“Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; and good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts.” James Beard

Toast with butter, served with hot tea
cost: about 25¢
location: home kitchen
soundtrack: morning news on TV
dress code: jeans
value: high


Up next: dinner at Starfish

My Birthday Week Begins

To bid adieu to "33"(my best year so far) I will spend the week eating as many of my favourite things as I can afford/find/handle.

1
Prime Rib with roasties and beets, served with Chianti
cost: $70 for the roast (naturally-raised superyum from Cumbraes) plus more for mise en place, veg and wine
location: the Brit's apartment, on a wobbly IKEA table
soundtrack: a Lee Evans comedy dvd
dress code: track pants
value: priceless


I mean come on. Ridiculously good. Perhaps the best roast beef I've ever eaten, made even more wonderful by our almost inappropriately casual dress and setting. Not sure how the rest of the week could possibly even come close.

Up next: toast with butter

A Serious Breakfast

During the week my typical breakfast is a slice of whole wheat toast with peanut butter, eaten while standing in front of the sink and taking giant drafts of hot tea. On ambitious days, I might carve up a grapefruit to go with. Super.

Weekends have a different tone. A tone of gross overindulgence. A tone of grease. But since restaurant brunches are the epitome of everything I hate in the world, the Brit and I have agreed that beans on toast at home is a far superior weekend meal to anything we could go out and spend $40 on.

He decided it was time for me to experience a Proper English Breakfast:


Although there were some necessary modifications to accommodate our non-British country of residence -- peameal since we cannot get English-style bacon, and no black pudding since we couldn't find it in any smaller quantity than Too Much.

2 fried eggs
2 broiled portobellos
1 fresh tomato, halved and broiled
2 thick slabs peameal
3 very good plain pork sausages
1 can Heinz beans mixed with 1 can tinned tomatoes (!!?)
Toast
Some sliced Cheddar
Hot mustard, Branston pickle

Chef's Tip

It's exciting that even at this stage in the game, after 15 years in the food industry, I can still discover a new "chef's tip" for myself.

If you're roasting 1 chicken, just go ahead and roast 2.

After all, with the right roasting pan (may I recommend the wonderful petite roti by All-Clad) roasting 2 is just as easy as one. And even with just 2 eaters on hand, the benefits are plenty:

1. we both get 2 wings, all crispy-salty-greasy wonderful
2. even after a big Sunday dinner I'm left with 1 de-meated carcass and 1 almost whole chicken which becomes:
2a. 2 chicken sandwiches (1 breast + 1 thigh)
2b. enough chicken bits for a pot pie
2c. bones to make a decent chicken soup (just add to sauteed veg, mmm).

LMP

A baking fever has taken hold of me. Last weekend it was brownies, the weekend before was chocolate cake, and now I've got meringue on my elbow and temple and have that sick-tummy feeling of having eaten too much raw pie dough (my mother's if-it-tastes-good-cooked-it-must-taste-even-better-raw genes at work). The Brit simply mentioned in casual conversation something about lemon meringue pie, and now there's one in the oven. Hmph.

While playing the role of #1 Slave in a gourmet takeaway several years ago, I used to make LM pie every other day or so. We sold it by the slice so it was crucial that the filling stay "gelled" even when sliced into. We finally figured out the perfect ratio of yolks: cornstarch, and built the whole affair on a shortbread cookie crust for better stamina. As I recall, that pie is the fucking bomb.

It's a 4-stage process:
1. toast almonds (or hazelnuts, so long as you haven't had any Frangelico-related unpleasantness in the past 10 years) and bzzz in the food processor til fine.

2. make awesomest crust ever in the food processor, press it into the pan (no rolling!), prick all over with fork and bake blind (nothing to do with eye-masks, but more how you line with parchment and fill with dried beans so the crust holds its shape).

3. Make lemon curd, strain and whisk in butter. Taste for seasoning. It is very important not to just go ahead and eat all the filling at this stage.


4. Make one shit-ton of meringue, cover, swirl, bake for another hour and a half or so.

There wasn't any cream of tartar in house, and somehow there was waaaay more meringue than I could get onto the pie, but I still have a good feeling about it all.

Mr Piggie

The Brit had a single-minded focus for his birthday dinner: a rotisserie suckling pig. Being one to oblige birthday wishes (I'm very bad at gifts and try to redeem this fault with special dinners and baked goods), and also being a fan of culinary adventures, I was delighted. We spent 2 weeks figuring out the logistics of 1) adding a rotisserie to my lame but valiant BBQ and 2) sourcing the perfect little piggie.


It took all day Saturday, between the sleeping in, two (2) visits to Home Depot, two (2) visits to Mr and Mrs Pork at the farmers' market, making sure there were two (2) propane tanks at the ready, and two (2) pints at my local before the rolling rotisserie even got going. We scored his skin, went crazy with the kosher salt and pepper and seasoned his belly cavity with my special Italian herbs for pork. All was going according to plan.



But then I had to clip off Piggie's adorable ears because they were in the way of the rotisserie action; snipping through ears with my kitchen scissors is a sensory experience I'll not soon forget. And we decided to wrap him in foil for the first little while so as not to burn the skin. But then the rotisserie started rolling back and forth instead of all the way around. Command decision: transfer Piggie to the oven. In one of those crappy foil roasters lined with more foil set over 2 overlapping baking sheets. After about 3 hours in total, we cranked on the broiler to get some sweet crackling action, braised a head of red cabbage and boiled some Desiree potatoes.

I have to be truthful and admit that I was prepared for the worst. I've never done a pig like this and it has always seemed something to leave to the professionals, like haircuts and chiropractic. I was ready to enjoy a delicious meal of nothing but red cabbage and potatoes.

But when my Brit fed me that first little shard of crackling, I nearly wept with pleasure. We stood over the cutting board and pillaged the crackling right off (and the tender cheeks for that matter) before I even began to carve.