December 2010 Archives

It's my favorite dinner of the year! instead of going out to a busy bar or restaurant, a bunch of us throw in some cash and get some really awesome ingredients and alcohol, and sit down and enjoy for a few hours at my house.. Here's this year's menu! Lots of cooking,this year I'm pairing with favorite pinot noirs.  

Most of us have never tasted "real" egg nog, current food handling laws prevent us from buying uncooked eggs for consumption in a beverage. There is a way to get eggs that have a very low risk of salmonella, they are eggs that have been fertilized, the only way I know to find these types of eggs are at a farmers market where the farmer actually has a clue on what they are doing.. So with that in mind here's my recipe for "real" egg nog 

I almost never use 100% beef when I make meatballs, chili, any kind of red sauce, or any recipe that calls for ground meat.  I generally believe in the 3-2-1 rule.. 3 parts beef or veal, 2 parts pork and 1 part lamb, in the spring when the local ontario lamb (spring lamb) is less gamey I use lamb as my 2 part. I like to pick out my cuts and have the butcher grind them up for me, however it's sometimes hard to get the butcher to grind me a small amount if I'm just making a simple week night dish for myself or for 2. I stumbled upon this as my local grocery store Fiesta Farms today.. A mix of veal, pork and beef! and in a small quantity. Dirty rice ahoy! 

This past saturday I decided to enter/attend Latkapaoloza, a Chanukah celebration at Caplansky's delicatessen.   I had met Zane Caplansky the previous weekend at a dinner party at chateau DivaQ where he had offered an invitation to Latkepaloza. Zane makes some of the best smoked meat I've ever had, and any excuse to visit Caplansky's is good with me. I highly suggest you check out Caplansky's.  I've only made Latkes a few times before, clearly I was going to need help, which I managed to find - I bought in a "stunt jew" (my friend Jenny) to help with my latkes.. We had an idea to turn latkes on their head.. so we found some fun ingredients, duck fat, bacon, purple potatoes, creme fraise, smoked salmon green onion and caviar. We had such an great evening drinking, enjoying each other's company and frying up our latkes we almost didnt make it to the contest! I clearly should have been paying attention to the rules to latkepaloza, We did manage to get honorable mention for our latkes, but we arrived too late, with to few latkes to be considered for grand champion of the latkes. We did manage to make it into the local media, here and I get the impression we may have had a good chance at winning if we had just arrive a bit earlier and with more latkes..