Enigma

Many years ago, I went to see Batman in the theatre. There's one scene where the Joker says, "This town needs an enema".

"Aha!" I thought, "that's how you pronounce 'enigma'."

Many years later I learned it's not.

Suddenly a lot of things started to make sense.

I've been cutting back a lot of good things out of my diet: mainly meat, eggs, and dairy. That's put a kink into my cooking, to say the least.

But I figure Valentine's Day is a special occasion, so I returned (much like a canine to his regurgitation) to my bad habits and made some sticky buns for my wife.

From Valentine's Day Cinnamon Buns

I've been playing with cinnamon buns for the last year or so, and have found they offer a high return on investment. They're not nearly so difficult to make as they look, and almost everyone loves them.

There's some room for variety with cinnamon rolls: I generally make way too much caramel and turn them into a sort of a caramel bun. But recently I've been making a simple butter frosting and serving them that way instead.

From Valentine's Day Cinnamon Buns

Probably my favourite variation is to put raisins in them, although Ames isn't such a huge fan. One interesting twist I tried was chopping a couple apples finely and rolling bits of chopped apple into the cinnamon spiral. That worked out rather well.

I use the simple cinnamon bun recipe I found in A Century of Canadian Home Cooking. The buns are chewy and soft, but they don't age well and feel stale within a couple days. Not like that's generally a problem.

We got up early, made some coffee, and ate fresh hot cinnamon buns. That was a great way to start the day.

From Valentine's Day Cinnamon Buns

Baking Day

It's only been fairly recently that I realized Americans really don't do butter tarts. You'd think I'd've noticed before now: since I moved to the States I've only seen and eaten butter tarts when I've been home visiting. Apparently they're a Canadian treat, who knew?

If you're not familiar with butter tarts, they're a delectable caramel confection, much like a southern pecan pie, but not as gelatinous. The filling is mainly butter and sugar. When I was growing up, they always had raisins in them, but they're not raisin tarts: the raisins are more of an adjunct than a main ingredient. The end result is a sort of caramel tart with a buttery, slightly gooey center.

From Baking day

Butter tarts aren't for the faint of heart. These little guys are pancreatic death bombs. If you've got blood sugar problems, or if diabetes runs in your family, or if you know someone with blood sugar problems, or if you've ever heard the word "pancreas"; you should probably avoid these guys like the plague. They'll kill you.

But today I was going to be deserted by wife and children for the day, so I decided to do some Christmas baking. And what says Christmas to an ex-pat Canadian, like fresh butter tarts? So I took out Mum's butter tart recipe, got my French press going, put on Christmas with the Academy, and settled in for a baking day.

The first order of business was baking some bread. I've experimented with bread off-and-on for the last four years: I've had some success with yeast breads, but sourdough hasn't been quite so easy. I began a new sourdough starter with the dregs of some beer I made last month, and it's been doing all right. We've made a couple things with it, and last night I decided to make some bread. It was looking pretty good this morning, having fermented all night, so into the oven it went.

From Baking day

It's not amazing bread, but it's the best sourdough I've been able to make yet. I think the problem is that I'm not letting the dough rise sufficiently after I shape it into loaves. I'm pretty good about letting it rise basically as long as it takes, but once I shape it I tend to throw it into the oven. I'm going to experiment with that a little more in the future.

Bread done, it was time to make tarts. I've never made tarts before, of any kind at all. I was planning on using a muffin tin to bake them, but Ames showed me this pan:

From Baking day

I said, "Oh! I didn't know we had a tart pan."

She responded, "This isn't a tart pan."

Not wanting to betray my ignorance, I merely nodded knowingly. I have no idea what kind of pan that is, and am too embarrassed to ask.

At any rate, I took our not-a-tart-pan and started assembling tarts.

From Baking day

The first batch didn't turn out the best. I made two rookie mistakes: first, I over-filled the tarts so that the centers overflowed the shells and left a real mess on my pans.

From Baking day

Second, I let them sit too long before I tried to remove them from the pan. This meant the sugar hardened into a sort of cement, and I ended up tearing several tarts apart trying to get them out of the non-tart pan.

From Baking day

So I made another batch. This time I greased the pan, carefully measured out a smaller portion of center per tart, and removed them while they were still dangerously hot. The result: I got a decent pan of tarts.

From Baking day

From Baking day

It was frankly pretty nice to taste something so like home. I'd forgotten how great these little guys are. All told, I made something like 30 tarts, and most of them are still intact. I think I'll need to make another couple dozen before Christmas.

Butter tarts out of the way, I got working on dinner: Chicken and Pastry.

From Baking day

Yeah, today was a good day.

There's still a lot of Christmas baking to do. I've not made Stollen yet this year, and I'm planning on at least one batch of ridiculously over-caramelled cinnamon buns. And it seems like I haven't made a pie in years.

But today was a nice way to get into Christmas.

Conclusive

I've decided on my favourite pizza toppings. By far, I prefer plain cheese pizza. But if it's gotta be topped, my favourite is pineapple, black olives, green olives, red onion, and jalapeno. Go heavy on the jalapeno. And if you add slices of a garlic clove, it really does get just the tiniest bit better.

Thanksgiving

It's already Thanksgiving. It seems like yesterday was New Years.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends and family!

Little Jerry's

I went to check out Little Jerry's, a new-ish restaurant in Tacoma. They've been getting some buzz on Facebook and Yelp.

Little Jerry's has a Seinfeld theme: all the items on the menu are named after episodes or characters on the show, the restaurant is decorated with Seinfeld memorabilia, and there are even J. Peterman catalogues on the magazine rack.

It's a tiny restaurant, and when our party of six showed up we were told we'd have to eat outside. I think we'd have been seated inside, except all the tables were full but two. We were just a little late. There's definitely a claustrophobic feel, but it's nothing too off-putting.

The menu is pretty much burgers and breakfast. Although the take-out menu didn't specify times, they stopped serving breakfast before we arrived. Zonked! I had planned on Eggs Benedict.

So instead of Eggs Benny, I ordered the "Mimbo", a cheeseburger with bacon and an egg, and two grilled cheese sandwiches instead of a bun.

It was an epic burger: I couldn't actually eat it all.

For the rest of the day I felt like I'd eaten a shot put.

Their fries are easily the best I've eaten in Washington. They were mahogany coloured, with the slight caramel flavour of mature fry grease. They were the fries my grandfather made for family gatherings when I was coming up. The server assured me the fries were hand-cut daily.

The service was pretty slow; I'm not sure if they were slammed, or if they just haven't found their stride yet. It wasn't "I won't go back" slow, but it took us the better part of an hour to get our food. I'll want to go and try it again to see whether it was just the timing, or perhaps their kitchen had trouble with our party of six.

On a more esoteric note, I found the menu was incongruous to the Seinfeld theme. The menu was right out of a southern greasy spoon comfort-food kitchen (like the Penguin in Charlotte); but Seinfeld was all about New York. Don't get me wrong: the food was great and I definitely plan on going back; but it seemed like two restaurants: there was a lot of Seinfeld schtick up until the food arrived, then it turned into an "I dare you to" burger joint.

The verdict? I'm sure planning on going back. The Seinfeld theme might wear thin, but the food would keep me coming back. Regardless of the schtick, it was solid food: too much of it will kill you, but it tasted great.

I highly recommend this place. But next time, I want to get there early enough to get Eggs Benny.

Chili

I love chili. A hot dog with a slice of cheese, a few jalapenos, and a slathering of chili might just be the perfect food. A bowl of chili and a handful of corn chips is one of the greatest Epicurean pleasures. But frankly, I'm willing to eat chili all on its own.

I took some chili to a church potluck last Sunday and some people asked for my recipe. Of course I haven't a recipe, but I've been having a hankering for chili anyway, so I just went ahead and made another batch today, taking notes.

I based my chili on a great recipe for Chile Colorado I found online. In fact, you probably want to make that Chile Colorado. It's fabulous.

Let's start with ingredients.

From Chili

Today I used about a pound and a half of ground beef (probably 80/20, I'm not too sure), a dozen New Mexico chiles, two onions, four cloves of garlic, three cans of beans, fresh jalapeno, salt, black pepper, crushed red pepper, and cumin. That's pretty close to the basic chili. I don't always use jalapeno, but I do like some sort of green in there for colour. Last week I used some very mild pepper that looked a lot like a poblano. Use what you like.

We start with the chiles. You can use basically any dried chiles you can get your hands on, but they don't all taste the same. My favourite is New Mexico chiles, but California chiles work well too. I've been known to throw ancho and arbol chiles in too, but I always use either New Mexico or California chiles for a base. In my experience, the New Mexico chiles have a richer flavour than the Californias, but they're noticeably hotter. If spicy food is your thing, the New Mexico are a great choice, but if you're more a "mild" person you might prefer the Californias.

I found this page helpful in listing different chiles and comparing them.

You'll want to wash and cut the chiles. A purist would seed them, but I usually don't bother. If you want to seed them, do it like this: cut off the stem, slit the chile in half, and scrape out the seeds and so on from inside the chile. Like this:

From Chili

If you remove the seeds, you'll find the chiles lose significant heat. But since my family are all into spicy food, I find it easier just to break off the stem and break the chile into about three pieces:

From Chili

When you've got all the chiles broken up and rinsed, put them in a pan with about three cups of water. I never measure the water, it's not that important. Then cover them, put them on the stove on high, and let them reach a boil.

From Chili

When you get a boil, take the chiles off the stove and let them sit for at least 30 minutes in the water. This will allow them to steep, and they'll rehydrate.

When you're waiting on the chiles, you might as well get everything else going. I used to brown the onions, then the beef, then add beans. But I realized I could cut down on grease if I did the beef first. That way, rather than draining the beef fat, I could just use it to fry onions and garlic in. It works out if you think about it.

So we'll put the beef in a heavy pot and get it going. I like to add some salt at this point, but I generally don't add anything else until after the meat is browned.

From Chili

Now when you're browning ground beef, the more you work it while it's still raw, the finer the browned beef will be. I like the meat to be really fine and distributed through the chili, so I work it a lot when it's raw. If you like chunks of meat in your chili, leave it alone and you'll get those chunks.

From Chili

Once the beef is thoroughly browned, take it out of the pan, leaving as much grease behind as you can. We'll use that to brown the onions. If you got lean beef, you might need to add butter, oil, or bacon fat here. They'll all work.

You'll want to get your onions, garlic cloves, and jalapenos chopped at this point. I normally use a mandoline, but today I just chopped with a knife. So I put onions, salt, some red pepper, and some black pepper into the beef fat and got them sizzling. Once the onions are translucent, you'll add garlic and jalapenos.

From Chili

When that all looks cooked enough, it's time to add the beef back in.

From Chili

I put a healthy does of cumin in there too: say a couple teaspoons. I don't know, I didn't measure.

When that all sizzles and you're worried about scorching, it's time to add in beans. Today I used a can of "Chili Beans" and two cans of black beans, but I rarely use the same combination twice. I really like it when I get at least three kinds of beans in there, but today I only had two.

I just dump the beans right on top of the meat and stir them in.

From Chili

I'll frequently rinse the bean cans with water and dump that in too.

From Chili

Now we'll let that cook while we head back to the chiles. Remember those? They're still steeping in the water, so we'll want to turn them into a paste. We'll need a blender here: I use a stick blender most of the time, but today I used the Bosch.

We'll take the chiles out of their bath and put them into the blender. They should be pretty well rehydrated at this point, looking a little bloated and cooked.

From Chili

We'll take them out of the water, not straining too carefully, and get them into the blender.

From Chili

Once the chiles are in there, they'll need some of their bath-water in there too. Not too much, just enough so you can blend them into a paste. I find you need about half the volume of the chiles in water, but it's best to go slow, adding more as you need it.

From Chili

Now you want to blend them into a smooth paste. This can take some time, but you'll want to do it right.

From Chili

Now we just add that paste back into the meat and bean mixture on the stove and stir it in.

From Chili

At first it'll be pretty brown, but after a few minutes it'll develop a nice deep red.

From Chili

Essentially you're cooking's done at this point, but it'll taste pretty rough for at least a couple hours. Let it simmer for at least two or three hours, then taste it again. It should start to taste pretty good.

I have to make a note of this: this recipe needs a lot of salt. The meat and chiles both seem to suck it right up. I probably have at least a tablespoon or two of salt in a batch, and I find myself adding salt through the day. Don't be shy with the salt: it'll make a world of difference.

So that's it: that's my chili. There's no tomato in it, and I find that makes it work really well in a Crock Pot, if you want to go that route. I find Crock Pots do murder to anything with tomato in it, but this chili works great in the slow-cooker.

Tonight we're having chili dogs, and I'm getting impatient!