Food/Drink
I have never liked adding dirty/cloudy ice to a great cocktail but the cost of clear ice has always been a bit prohibitive for me. One method of making clear ice at home is to use a cooler. Filling a cooler ~75% with water and then putting it uncovered in a freezer for ~14 hours creates a crystal clear layer of ice while the dissolved gasses remain in the water layer below. The 1-2 inch sheet of clear ice can then be removed and cut down to size.
In my opinion there is nothing quite as primal as eating a bone in steak and nothing tops that quite like a nice char grill finish.
Now that peppers are in season I have an abundance of hot peppers that are more that I can eat or give out. The solution is obviously to preserve them.
A new method I am trialling this year is to dehydrate them in my food dehydrator. I used a combination of peppers namely Chili, Birds Eye & Carolina Reapers and dehydrated them over 48hrs at 125F.
The end product was very successful but a partially expected consequence was that upon initial startup I effectively tear gassed the house as by heating the peppers at 125F I released some of their capsaicin oil. This is a bit of an exaggeration as it was completely bearable but there was a noticeable “spiciness” in the air. For next year I will attempt sun drying them or dehydrating in my sunroom.
I was able to get my hands on fresh black winter truffles.
The general smelling notes are exactly what you will see written online. Very musky, pungent earthy aroma. Not quite sharp but bound to add a muskiness to any dish. For most dishes I simply shaved some truffle on a microplane but cutting thin slices on a mandoline also make a very appealing garnish.
The main dishes I made with this was:
By far my favourite mushroom is the Chanterelle or “Kurki” as it is known in Polish. A perfect balance of sweetness and “funginess” it is the perfect ingredient in a cream sauce.
Though I have made my opinions widely known Canada is completely devoid of choice when it comes to mushrooms and arguably many Canadians only know of the button or Cremini mushroom. Contrast this with Europe where I could purchase 200g boxes of Chanterelle at popular chain supermarkets (Biedronka in Poland).
This is not to say that we do not have good mushroom selection in Canada. I have been able to find good selections at my local farmers where they regularly have morel and infrequently chanterelle but the issue is that these mushrooms are older as it appears they have travelled across the country. I have had conversations with them as their products were visibly wilted compared to fresher product pictured below but nevertheless it is not easy to source mushrooms in this country/province.
All that aside my family was able to find some fresh Chanterelle mushrooms and so I was able to take on this opportunity and make a beloved cream of Chanterelle mushroom sauce with fresh pasta. I added a bit of hunter sausage to this to make it a more “wild” pasta with foraged mushrooms but all in all it played a perfect balance and the end product was divine for as long as the supply lasted.
Brussels Sprouts, Bacon & Gruyère, a match made in heaven. A perfect balance of seared vegetables, cured meats and intermingled cheese. I use this as a quick and easy recipe that really doesn’t need much explanation. Key notes are that the Brussels sprouts need to be properly seared not lazily boiled and the cheese needs to be added while everything is warm so it softens up. Different cheeses could be used but gruyère is a good fit as it is a firm aged cheese with character.
Now that its strawberry season it is fairly easy and cheap to get large quantities of strawberries at the farmers market but this won’t last long so its time to “make hay while the suns out”. My personal method for converting large amounts of strawberries to shelf stable snacks is strawberry “Chips” where 5mm cut strawberries are dehydrated at 135F for ~12hrs. This makes a good snack for the rest of the year and due to its very low moisture content once its done it is shelf stable.
Unfortunately Canada does not have much of a variety of mushrooms at any large or specialty grocery stores so I was fairly fortunate to get my hands on fresh morrell mushrooms. I don’t have much of a recipe as a good mushroom can be just slow fried in butter and tossed with fresh made pasta.
These weren’t my favourite mushroom (Chanterelle #1) but were a refreshing enough change for the regularly available mushrooms.
In the past I thought the the typical way of measuring a materials density is to measure its volume and then weigh it. As there are obvious difficulties and flaws (fluids can evaporate during measurements, volume size errors) a different way is to use a refractometer which uses a fluids index of refraction to estimate it’s density/etc. These all have to be calibrated for the particular working fluid and I have one made for ethanol. It is a good tool and a non destructive small sample way of finding the alcohol %.
After calibration at the low and high end I was able to measure the alcohol% in various drinks and found some that under deliver. One key thing to note is to never take measurements blindly as alcoholic beverages that have high sugar content can artificially change the alcohol% as it changes the fluid density.
I may lie and say that “a classic Moscow mule is a bit crude” being served in a copper mug and that is why I recommend an “elevated” version but in reality I just don’t want to buy copper mugs :(.
That being said this Moscow mule looks nothing like the classic but still carries that great punch. Serving this up in a coupe glass makes in a nice elegant sip and with crystallized ginger as a garnish it just brings it into another realm. I don’t have much preference to the vodka but “The Great Gentleman” ginger beer is my personal favourite in this (lime juice and homemade ginger syrup added as well :D) .
