Yellowknife, Northwest Territories

I was really lucky at the beginning of this month to get to see a part of the world that not many people get to see...the Canadian North.

 It's funny, because when I was in college I randomly met this guy, and somewhat by chance, he got a job in Edmonton.  We moved to Edmonton and then, completely by chance, I got a job that I hadn't really been trained for at all, and through that job, I ended up traveling to this beautiful, remote part of the world called Yellowknife, where buffalo roam and the sky is in a constant state of sunrise and sunset.

Yellowknife was beautiful to visit and a place that I feel blessed to get to see.  While there, I bought caribou jerky, went dogsledding, and saw the Northern Lights.  It was awesome.

 

 

 

Christmas 2009

A beautiful centerpiece

A great bottle of wine

A festive salad

Traditional trout

Plenty of presents

and an Abundance of tickets

A wonderful Christmas do make.

Merry Christmas!

Vanillekipferl

Vanillekipferl are classic Austrian Christmas cookies.  They're small, delicate, crescent-shaped, and flavored with vanilla and almonds.

The perfect vanillekipferl has a most delicate texture that crumbles almost instantly when you put it in your mouth.  Last time I tried to make vanillekipferl (a few years ago) with a recipe I found on the internet, it was a total disaster.  They were hard as rocks!  This year, Georg's mother emailed me the recipe she uses, and it worked really, really well.

                                                                               

 

You need:

150 grams butter

2 egg yolks

80 grams sugar

1 package of vanilla sugar

200 grams flour

100 grams ground almonds

50 grams powdered sugar

2 additional packages of vanilla sugar

To make:

Cream the butter and sugars together, beat in the egg yolks.  Stir in the ground almonds and finally the flour to form a crumbly dough.  Refrigerate for a few hours or overnight.

Form the dough into 2 inch long ropes, then shape into crescents.  Bake at 350 degrees for 8-12 minutes, or until cookies are done (the length of time will depend on the size and thickness of the crescent shapes).  While the cookies are baking, mix together the powdered sugar and the packets of vanilla sugar in a pie dish.  When the cookies come out of the oven, allow them to cool just slightly (or else they will break when you try to dredge them in the sugar).  While the cookies are still quite warm, carefully place them in the plate and coat them well with the sugar.  Shake off the excess sugar, and then place on a plate and allow to cool fully.

 

                                                                               

Piparkoogid and a Christmas Tree with Georg and Laura

      

My friend Laura has some Estonian heritage and makes Piparkoogid (Estonian spice cookies) with her family during the holiday season.  This year, she decided to share her recipe and make Piparkoogid with me!

Laura's recipe comes from a recipe book that her grandmother put together, which features not only recipes, but also helpful tips, drawings, and some of her favorite sayings.  It was really fun to look though it.

The dough is flavored with a spice syrup, which you make by warming golden syrup with cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and cardamom.  Laura informed us that the dough tastes even better than the baked cookies, so we ate a lot of dough before we started baking.  The flavor of the dough and eventually the cookies was very good--a very complex warmth from the spices and butter.

Piparkoogid are decorated before baking, by applying colored sugar and almonds to the dough which has been made slightly sticky with a brushing of beaten egg.  I think they are typically cut into Chrismas shapes (gingerbread persons, stars, and trees) but we didn't have any Christmas cookie cutters, so we had to make do.

We didn't end up doing a very elegant job of decorating the cookies, as you can probably see from looking at the rather sad Christmas tree to the right.  As we found out, it is really hard to sprinkle colored sugar precisely!

We ended up making kind of a joke out of it, and most of the cookies ended up looking totally bizarre.  We took them to work and everyone ate them though!

The same day, Laura was gracious enough to drive us to get a Christmas tree so we wouldn't have to convince some cab or bus driver to let us take it in their vehicle.  We ended up getting the most beautiful, symmetrical, densely-needled Christmas tree I think I've ever had!

                                

Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Chestnuts and Sage Butter

 

This was my second time making gnocchi.  Oddly enough, the last time I made gnocchi, I made it with butternut squash, which means I must only be up to making gnocchi when it contains a non-traditional ingredient.  Sometime I should try making plain gnocchi--gnocchi, after all, is a delicious and cost-effective dish that deserves to be made in its most plain state anytime!

I picked this particular recipe because it is so fall-like.  I baked sweet and regular baking potatoes in the oven until they were tender, peeled the potatoes, and then blended them with a bit of egg, flour, cheese, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

Every time I watch someone making gnocchi on TV, I hear that it's so hard to make and so easy to mess up.   That's not necessarily true--my gnocchi came out perfectly pillowy and delicious.  I just think the preparation requires a couple of hints.  I think it's important not to overmix the dough mixture after the flour has been added.  This just makes scientific sense--mixing the dough forms strings of gluten and renders the gnocchi chewy and rubbery.  I think it's also important to know how to form the dough--if you don't know, and are endlessly fooling with the dough to get it into its proper shape, it's also going to get overworked and chewy.  But these are the basic things you need to know.  It's not impossible to make decent gnocchi at home.

Some recipes, such as the one I used, will instruct you to simply press a fork into a piece of cut gnocchi dough.  This is not the way to do it.  Texturizing the gnocchi is a good idea, since more surface area means more space to which delicious sauce can cling.  But just pressing a fork into the dough and leaving it at that will yield a flatly shaped gnocchi.  Rather, you have to use your thumb to not only impress the fork upon the gnocchi, but to roll it up slightly from the fork into an oval shape.  It takes a little bit of practice, but becomes easy after you've done ten or so.

To cook the gnocchi, you slide them into boiling, salted water, and cook until they rise to the top of the cooking liquid.  Then you transfer them to a pan of whatever kind of good sauce you have waiting.  I have had excellent gnocchi in plain marinara sauce, in bleu cheese-tomato sauce, in wild mushroom sauce, and more, but this time the recipe called for a sage-brown butter sauce.  Basically, I cooked some olive oil and butter with sage until the butter was browned, then tossed the gnocchi and some chopped chestnuts in it.  It was very delicious and seasonal dish.

Salt and Pepper Shakers: Georg's Gift to Me on our 5th Anniversary

For the fifth anniversary of Georg's and my fated meeting, Georg gave me these cute, loving salt and pepper shakers (among other things).  They are awfully cute hugging, but can also be posed in lots of other adorable positions.  I love them!  Thanks Georgie!

A Moment in Life

Roasted Butternut Squash and Chickpea Salad with Lemon Tahini Dressing

When the weather starts getting cold, I find myself wanting to eat winter squashes all the time.  It just seems like the right thing to do.  I like spaghetti squash with herbs and butter, acorn squash with butter and a bit of maple syrup (and a splash of pumpkin seed oil if I have it), and butternut squash, roasted in the oven with olive oil, salt, and a bit of spice.

This recipe takes spiced, roasted butternut squash (I used cinnamon and cumin) and combines it with chickpeas, onions, garlic, cilantro, and a lemony, nutty dressing.  I thought it was an interesting, new preparation for my beloved winter squash.

The salad is delicious warm, and though I ate it for lunch yesterday by itself, I could imagine it being very good and very beautiful on a bed of arugula.  I loved the dressing--the tart lemon and rich tahini are perfect for each other.  The raw garlic and onion in the dressing was a bit intense.  If I did it again, I'd roast the onions and garlic along with the squash to mellow them out a bit.

This preparation of butternut squash has traveled quite extensively throughout the food blogosphere; you can find the recipe here and here. 

Pastry Cutouts

This is kind of a fun thing for pies--pastry cutouts!  Instead of throwing away extra dough you might have, you can create a design for the top.  I wish I'd had some leaf cutters, leaves would have looked much more at home on a pumpkin pie, but hearts are cute too.

Beef Rouladen

A few days ago, Georg was requesting a dish from childhood: Rouladen, a dish with its origins in the German-speaking world. I had no clue how to make them and it was fun to learn!

I found this recipe on Food Network Canada, which seemed pretty reliable. You take thin beef steaks, smear them with dijon mustard, and roll them up with bacon, pickles, and onion (I used some garlic instead to accommodate Georg). Then you sear them, deglaze the pan with red wine, add some beef stock, and simmer the Rouladen for a couple of hours. After the meat is really tender, you remove it and thicken the cooking liquid with a cornstarch and water mixture.

The Rouladen were delicious. The meat was tender, the resulting gravy was richly flavored, and the bacon, pickles, and other fillings were an interesting addition. I have to admit that I felt odd about rolling pickles up in beef. In fact, as I was doing it, I was talking on the phone to my sister. I was explaining the process, expressing that I found the pickles odd, and she said, "just sounds like the ingredients in a really good hamburger!" That rationalization of the ingredients made me feel better.

Kraft's Vegemite iSnack 2.0

While in Australia, I saw a familiar jar in the grocery store. The label had the look of Vegemite spread, but when I looked closely, it said, "Name me!"

I soon learned that this was a new spread conceived by Kraft made creamer and tangier than the original Vegemite by the introduction of cream cheese. It was launched in July 2009 with no name because to drum up publicity for the product, Kraft held a nationwide contest in Australia to find a name for this "deliciously different Vegemite experience."

When I arrived in Australia, the new name had just been picked and announced. They named it iSnack 2.0. I don't believe there was any voting involved--I think the crowd just submitted names and the executives at Kraft picked one they felt best suited the product.

Simon Talbot from Kraft Foods said: "The name Vegemite iSnack2.0 was chosen based on its personal call to action, relevance to snacking and clear identification of a new and different Vegemite to the original. We believe these three components completely encapsulate the new brand."

That's an interesting viewpoint, but the public hated the name, absolutely hated it, and it's easy to see why--Vegemite is a nearly hundred-old, beloved Australian food product, and just because it's been mixed with some cream cheese doesn't mean it needs to be completely severed from its origins with a name like iSnack 2.0. I mean, iPod... iTunes...these refer to new, trendy technologies, not classic food products, and for iSnack 2.0 to refer to a Vegemite variant is just really odd and completely irrelevant. Besides, the whole ieverything thing is tired, boring, and is starting to get annoying.

So it's funny that the Kraft executives chose the name. But the Kraft executives can't be stupid; I'm sure they had a team of marketing experts carefully analyzing which name would be the right one to represent the product. Instead, they seem to have picked the name that would most outrageously misrepresent the product, inspiring public rage.

Smart! You should have seen all the newspaper articles and people on TV talking about how terrible the name iSnack 2.0 is. People talked about it much more than they would have talked about a nice name. The marketing team at Kraft must have known it would have been much more sensational to pick the wrong name for their beloved Vegemite than the right one.

Kraft let the drama fester for a short while, and then decided to dump the name. I haven't heard what the new one is. Meanwhile, the new Vegemite spread has sold more than 3 million jars in Australia, which is impressive for a country with a population of only about 20 million.

Anyway, I like the spread--the jar I brought back from Australia has lasted me less than a month. It's creamy and savory and a bit cheesy, and I really like a thin layer on a bagel in the morning.

Oh, and here's a fun website dedicated to iSnack 2.0 that I believe truly exhibits the level of public interest surrounding this whole ordeal:
http://isnack2.com/

Georg's Birthday

Georg's thirty-somethingth birthday was on September 27th! Unfortunately we were apart on his birthday (I was in Edmonton and he was in Sydney) but I was sure to throw him a fine celebration as soon as we got home. I made a beef roast, cayenne and maple syrup mashed sweet potatoes, lemon roasted cauliflower, and a special raspberry-cream cheese cake.

With dinner we drank a Gruener Veltliner from Austria that Georg's dad brought us when he visited this summer.


The cake turned out a bit feminine but Georg loved it nonetheless. As my friends on Facebook have noted, real men eat pink cake!


Happy Birthday, my Georgie!

Australia in 30 Pictures

Wow, it's been over a month since I've updated my blog! One of the reasons I've been so busy over the past month was because of a trip Georg and I took to Sydney, Australia. It was a lot of fun! Here's 30 photos detailing my trip.



The Harbour Bridge


These tall, Dr. Seuss-like flowers were everywhere! They were so neat!


Walking on the left side of everything was definitely tedious.


The Sydney Opera House





The flowers were really exotic.


A parrot simply perched in a tree.


Ibises were everywhere too!


Instant pavlova...pavlova being the national dessert.


The amazing El Alamein fountain, not too far from where one of our hotels was.






Manly Beach



On a ferry on the way to the zoo!




A pastoral scene...sheep lounging under orange trees.


Kangaroos in the wild!!



The vineyards of Hunter Valley.



Australian sunset