Oh Canada!-2/14/10

Friday night was the Opening Ceremonies for the Vancouver Olympic Winter Games. I must confess, I'm an Olympics junkie. Growing up, my family did not have a television. I remember spending summer nights at my friend's homes, watching the Olympics until all hours of the night. Then, when I was 20, I was able to attend the Barcelona Olympic Games. What an amazing experience! If you can make it to any Olympics, go. If you are American and can attend an Olympics in another country, be prepared to see the Olympics in a completely different light. Watching on television we see primarily American athletes, many of whom are among the top athletes at the Games and are expected to compete for medals. The eye-opening part of attending the Games elsewhere is that the citizens of the host country are just as proud of their athletes, regardless of their medal hopes. While I was in Barcelona, a Spanish biker won silver and the television covered him for the next several hours, doing everything short of take a shower. The American stars of that Olympics were treated much like everyone else by the local media. It was a refreshing reminder that the United States is not, as we often think, the center of the world.
Tonight I veered from my Bon Appetit based monthly menu and scanned around on the Internet for a meal that would represent the home country of Canada. I didn't find a ready made menu that looked very authentic, just lots of high end recipes from Canadian chefs. So I found some fun recipes with Canadian ingredients and had a little fun with it.
My appetizer used Canadian bacon and a traditional French cheese, Brie, as a nod to Francophone Quebec. I found the recipe for Brie and Canadian Bacon Appetizer at the dorothylane.com website, a high end grocery store in Ohio. Honestly, the recipe didn't really work. The brown sugar/ pecan mixture was too thick to melt in the time allotted while the bacon overcooked making it incredibly chewy. The appetizer would have been better with the whole appetizer heated together. The baguette crispy, the cheese melted, and just a frosting of the brown sugar/pecan mixture, that would have been much better. Oh well, you live and learn.
The Maple-Glazed Squash and Green Beans with Walnuts was a creative and yummy side dish.
The contrasting orange and green looked great and the soy-maple glaze was subtly sweet. I found this recipe on recipezaar.com as it was recommended for Canadian Thanksgiving. In all fairness, it would work for American Thanksgiving just as well.
The main dish, the Potato Crusted Salmon, was also from recipezaar and was created by a Canadian chef, Michael Smith. The horseradish-potato crust was good but did not brown up in the time allotted. Richard and I both liked the dish but did not find it spectacular.
The final dish, Apple and Maple Bread Pudding was a Bon Appetit recipe from last month. This was an excellent bread pudding with the apple retaining a nice crunch and the maple syrup adding a flavorful sweetness. The addition of a little syrup while serving the dessert added a nice alternative to ice cream. This was a fun and easy menu that showed off some key ingredients from a wonderful country.
Brie and Canadian Bacon Appetizer-D
Maple-Glazed Squash and Green Beans with Walnuts-B+
Potato Crusted Salmon-B
Apple and Maple Bread Pudding-A

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hambrick's-Party of Four!-8/1/11

Image
On August 24th of last year, I wrote a innocuous little post on this blog about my husband being a good sport about my creative culinary exploits.  And then....nothing....for over 11 months.  What happened, you may ask?  Well, the picture at left tells a rather significant part of the story but not the whole thing so I'll try to summarize here in case another 11 months go by before I post again.  (Okay, I will seriously try not to do that!)  The year 2010 started off on the wrong foot with the loss of our fourth pregnancy (Thankfully, pregnancy #2 had resulted in Eyrleigh!) at 18 weeks.  We were still reeling from the devastation of that event when my only sibling, my brother Ben, committed suicide at the end of February.  Then in April, Richard's company hired a new CEO and things professionally went south from there for him.  Since a blog is a public format and could therefor be accessed by anyone, including this individual, let me suf...
Read more

Can you say "Tsatsiki"?- 3/12/09

Image
Ok , now is the time for honesty. How many of you have been at a restaurant, wanted to order something but hesitated because you didn't want the servers all laughing at you in the back about how badly you butchered the name of your wine or dish? I live in the South and people order " Gy -rows" at the Great Wraps. In fact, I just looked it up on the Merriam Online Dictionary and that is exactly what they said. I always thought the word was "he-rows" and have ordered them like that for years. Now imagine that with " Tsatsiki "? I tried to look that word up on the online dictionary and you know what is suggested instead? Testicles. Yep, could entertain a few servers for years with that one! Can you picture it? "That lady ordered Chicken Gyros with Cucumber Salsa and Testicles!" Ok , seriously, how do you say " Tsatsiki "? Do you just drop the t, like sat- siki ? Or does the ts make some other sound that is not common in English? But l...
Read more

After I Learn Italian-3/4/10

Image
Cooking magazines love to use fancy names for recipes to make them sound more authentic and delicious. Tonight I made Buccatini all" Amatriciana , basically Italian for tubular pasta with bacon and tomato sauce. It sounds much fancier in Italian. I think everything sounds fancier in Italian. I need to learn Italian or at least go to Italy to hear it spoken for awhile. How I missed the entire country when I backpacked through Europe is beyond me. I think Eyrleigh and Richard would really love to go there too. Though Buccatini all'Amatriciana sounds complicated, it wasn't and the use of store-bought tomato sauce made it downright simple. I replaced the pancetta with low-sodium bacon and realized I had no more Romano cheese so I used Manchego . It worked. The flavor added to the store-bought sauce was an improvement. I may not duplicate this recipe exactly again but this recipe reinforced that anything can be added to a commercial sauce to give it an extra dimension. ...
Read more